python@ as ports maintainer

[Alexander Botero-Lowry]

Hi everyone,

I've been seeing a trend lately that I find a bit disturbing and I just wanted
to lay down the official python@ policy on this issue. The trend I'm referring
to is the setting of python@ on python consumer ports without first discussing
it with the python@ list. Early on, perky@ and I decided we didn't want python@
to be a dumping ground for any python consumer and that we wanted to carefully
think through the ports that were directly maintained by the group with the out
look of providing better QA for a small subset of important and critical ports
related to or used heavily by Python consumers. That being said, we feel that
if every python consumer in ports is owned by python@ we can not sufficently
provide support to maintain and keep them up to date. What is good for a small
number of ports becomes unmanigable at a larger number, just like ports
maintained by ports@ though more accessible to committers tend to see less
updates and fixes simply because there are just so many of them.

So please, in the future if you commit a python consumer to ports ask us before
opting to set the maintainer to python@, and if you see any ports owned by
python@ that might fit into the category of not critical or heavily used please
ask to take maintainership.

Thanks!