[FFmpeg-devel] Voting committee

[Ganesh Ajjanagadde]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Stefano Sabatini <stefasab at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as discussed in the last IRC meeting, we settle some simple criteria
> to define what an active developer is, based on the commit count.
>
> We are aware that such metrics are flawed in many ways, but since we
> needed to converge on some simple measurable criteria, we decided to
> adopt this one.
>
> We consider the number of commits in the FFmpeg source code git
> repository, in the last year before the beginning of the meeting
> (2015-09-12 15 UTC) and we exclude merge commits and commits from
> contributors who didn't contribute directly to FFmpeg (to state it
> clearly, that basically sorts out the Libav developers). Note also
> that I'm excluding commit from the ffmpeg-web repo (we didn't consider
> that explicitly when agreeing upon the criteria).

I assume changing the metric if and when a merge happens from libav is
going to be handled by the first voting committee.

>
> If the counted number of commits for a developer is >= 50, then we
> consider "active" that developer and thus enabled to be part of the
> first voting committee.

This 50 is of course an arbitrary threshold, and translates into how
big the project wishes its voting committee needs to be. IMO, the 50
threshold seems to result in a reasonably sized committee.

>
> This voting committee will be enabled to define new more fine-tuned
> rules for the voting rights criteria, and will have to deal with the
> definition of a decision/conflict resolution system.

I also assume such rules for the voting rights criteria include
how/when to re-update the list, or in other words create a new voting
committee. Again, this could be a task for the first voting committee.

>
> To count the commits I'm using this command on an FFmpeg git
> repository:
> git shortlog -s -n --no-merges --since=2014-09-12T15:00:00Z --until 2015-09-12T15:00:00Z
>
>   2555  Michael Niedermayer
>    443  Vittorio Giovara
>    283  Martin Storsjö
>    257  Clément Bœsch
>    249  Anton Khirnov
>    248  James Almer
>    237  Paul B Mahol
>    206  Carl Eugen Hoyos
>    205  Luca Barbato
>    186  Andreas Cadhalpun
>    148  Ronald S. Bultje
>    109  wm4
>    101  Lukasz Marek
>     95  Rostislav Pehlivanov
>     68  Hendrik Leppkes
>     67  Christophe Gisquet
>     56  Reynaldo H. Verdejo Pinochet
>
> Considering only direct developers from FFmpeg, I get this list:
>
>   2555  Michael Niedermayer
>    257  Clément Bœsch
>    248  James Almer
>    237  Paul B Mahol
>    206  Carl Eugen Hoyos
>    186  Andreas Cadhalpun
>    148  Ronald S. Bultje
>    109  wm4
>    101  Lukasz Marek
>     95  Rostislav Pehlivanov
>     68  Hendrik Leppkes
>     67  Christophe Gisquet
>     56  Reynaldo H. Verdejo Pinochet
>
> Thus we should consider these as the "active" developers forming the
> first voting commmittee, according to the agreed criteria defined
> during the meeting.
>
> If you believe this list can be improved, please let me know.

Modulo above assumptions, it looks fair to me.

> --
> FFmpeg = Faithful & Fundamentalist Merciless Portable Energized God
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