At 12:53 PM 6/19/00 -0700, David Berg wrote:

>
>Which brings up a bit of a nit. On this list, it's hard to tell who is and
>isn't an Interbase employee. Most people don't list company affiliations,
>so you have to guess who's who (you can sometimes tell it from the E-Mail
>address, but since Outlook doesn't show E-Mail addresses, just names, you
>have to drill down into the name to see it).
>
>Usually it's easy to do because of the content of the messages:
>non-employees ask questions / raise issues and employees answer them.
>

I think the right answer for this list is that it shouldn't matter.
InterBase-IV is the custodian of the code base, but the product is
public source. This doesn't mean that the public gets to see the
code, but that the community gets to drive development as well (see
caviats below). The InterBase engineers will have the same responsibility
to propose changes, respond to comments, and suffer code review
as the rest of the community. The only real difference is that
their priorities will be set (and their salaries paid) by InterBase
Software Corporation, IV.

The checkin policy will be something like this:

1. InterBase employees will have checkin privilege.
2. I will have checkin privilege.
3. Somebody without checkin privilege will need to convince
somebody with it that a change has been appropriatedly
reviewed and deemed Worthy.
4. Folks with an established track record for accepted
changes will be given checkin privileges.

InterBase Software Corporation does not have final say over what
can or cannot be checked in by non-employees. An independent
developer can either convince an InterBase engineer to checkin
a patch or appeal to Architectural Review Board (which happens
to be me, at least initially).

Jim Starkey