Subject matter experts and working groups

Date

23 October, 2025

Topics

Speakers

Not Available

Transcript by

Not Available

What is maintenance?

Different from just merge access and not just done by maintainers. It takes a village
GitHub admin and moderation
Continuous integration
Releases and release process, backports, translations, GUIX, website (checkout the release-notes file)
Security, disclosures, advisories
Perceived “tech leads” in different areas of the codebase

Locking means nobody can comment. everybody except maintainers
Do not unlock for a comment and then relock (see OP_RETURN)
Perspective is locking meaning everyone stop, cooldown period
Moderation from the public look like the “organization” executed the action “bitcoin”
Moderators can hide, not delete comments. Maintainers can delete
“.” title for closed PRs usually means someone cleaned up obvious spam, so you can safely ignore

Someone to run the IRC meetings? (see IRC meeting cheat sheet in the wiki)
- Speak up if you want to be on the IRC meeting ping list

Want more GUIX builders. Initially 20, now less. Especially for minor releases
GUIX builders, subscribe to release tracking issues
Minimum GUIX builds required to upload to the website. More signatures, sooner, the better

Separate packing repo, for script and artifacts for many random things, looking for volunteers

People who have familiarity with a certain area of the codebase
No feedback is worse than negative feedback in many cases. Silence deafening
- Can maybe lose newer contributors due to this
Informal tech lead position, somewhat already exists, but can formalize that
Nice to have someone quickly concept ACK or concept NACK PRs
- Avoids scenarios when PRs are opened and sit dead for weeks
- Reviewers unsure whether to review
- Author unsure of status/approach/etc
Adds to burnout, confusion
For PRs in certain areas of the codebase, SMEs can give future direction to PRs sooner
Can also serve as a tiebreaker when mutually exclusive PRs are proposed
Less of an owner of that code, but more of as an unblocker
Names and areas will be public
Expectation is that each PR in a given area will be reviewed (for concept ACK or concept NACK) within 2 two weeks. This is not a full review.
Of course anyone else can ALSO do this
Should bigger PR projects actually get an ACK before completely developing it?
- Bring it up on IRC