Important: MacPorts PortMgr Changes

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 30, 2008, at 11:18, James Berry wrote:

> As many of you know, MacPorts is loosely governed by the "PortMgr"
> team, which is currently made up of three people: Markus Weissmann,
> Juan Manual Palacios, and James Berry.
>
> We each love MacPorts, and hope to see it continue to prosper and grow
> in the future. And we want to continue to contribute to the success of
> MacPorts as our time and professional lives allow in the future.
>
> But we each also have other significant professional and personal
> commitments that have made it difficult for us to put what we feel is
> an appropriate amount of time, energy, and enthusiasm into MacPorts in
> recent months and years, to the extent that we feel that additional
> day-to-day leadership is needed to ensure continued success and growth
> for the MacPorts project.
>
> So we want to propose some ideas to get new leadership blood into
> MacPorts, while retaining the systemic knowledge and continuity that
> our continued presence can allow. We therefore want to put the
> following plan forward for community comment (and hopefully,
> thereafter, implementation):
>
> (1) That the MacPorts community elect a new slate of PortMgr
> individuals, probably three people, to continue to guide day-to-day
> MacPorts operations and direction.
>
> (2) That the three of us move into an Elder-council ("advisory board",
> "trustees", "steering committee", etc), which will continue to help
> out and give guidance as needed, and watch over the long-term health
> of MacPorts assets such as domains and finances.
>
> The idea for the Elder council is based on our experience in the last
> several years. We've hesitated to make changes to PortMgr because we
> didn't want to disrupt continuity, but that has meant that PortMgr has
> stagnated as year-by-year changes in our lives affected our respective
> abilities to effectively govern day to day. We (collectively) need the
> ability to make swifter more responsive changes at the PortMgr level,
> while also ensuring the longer term continuity of the community and
> the infrastructure it relies on.
>
> We propose that PortMgr members be appointed by the community and have
> full control of all day-to-day operations of MacPorts. The Elder
> council will give advice and help to PortMgr members as requested, or
> as they see fit, but will not have the ability to replace or remove
> PortMgr members: that responsibility lies with the community. The
> Elder council might from time to time add or remove its own members:
> it's primary function is to oversee the long-term health and direction
> of the project, including long-term assets such as finances and
> domains. We also see the Elder council as a broader group from which
> PortMgr can draw for help if its members become temporarily
> preoccupied with life.
>
> We have asked Jordan Hubbard, the father of MacPorts, to join us on
> the Elder Council, and he has given his tentative acceptance.
>
> We'd like to ask for community comment on this plan, following which
> we hope to call for new PortMgr nominations and election in the coming
> weeks.
>
> We believe that successful nominees for the portmgr positions will
> have demonstrated an active participation in the MacPorts community,
> will have the technical and organizational skills to help lead and
> direct the project, and will have the time, energy, and experience to
> make and inspire great contributions to the project.
>
> The PortMgr team: Markus, Juan, and James

Sounds like a good idea to me! I for one would be delighted to join  
the PortMgr team. I've been with the MacPorts project for three years  
and have been a committer for two years. I'm maintainer of over four  
dozen ports and have made some improvements to base as well. I try to  
keep an eye on the new unassigned tickets and try to resolve or  
assign them. I try to read every commit mail that comes through the  
changes list and provide constructive criticism. And of course I  
answer questions on the users and dev mailing lists. I also think I  
could be helpful with MacPorts releases, since I have both PowerPC  
and Intel Macs running all the versions of Mac OS X MacPorts  
supports. In short, if we agree to the plan Markus, Juan and James  
proposed and open up the floor for nominations for PortMgr  
membership, I would be honored to accept your nomination. :-)