[BuildStream] Formalizing committers

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan vanberkom codethink co uk>]

Hi all,

    As it was announced over a month ago[0], BuildStream will be moving
to the Apache Software Foundation, and there are a number of steps
which need to be taken on our behalf in order to ensure a smooth
transition. This means adopting some of the ASF's formal development
processes, which we will try to accomplish in baby steps.

The first step here is to change our policy around technical
governance[1] and define our initial committers, and I think the
easiest way forward is to adopt the subversion project's guidelines[2]
to a minimal degree - causing minimal friction/change at this time, and
allowing us to more formally adopt further policy after a migration to
ASF.


What does it mean ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a nutshell this means:

  * There will be an initial set of project committers.

  * Any patches need to be gated on a review from one of the
    committers.

  * New committers can be "sponsored" by an existing committer via a
    private communication to all other committers.

    If there is any objection, a discussion takes place, and a majority
    vote is needed to onboard the new committer in the case where
    agreement cannot be reached.

    For now, these communications will be in the form of private
    emails, and after moving the project to the ASF, these discussions
    will take place on a private, archived mailing list hosted by
    the ASF.

I think that at this time, there is no need to adopt more formal
policy, and committers can act as "release managers" (in the referred
documentation) until we move to the ASF and refine the policy a bit
more.


Actions
~~~~~~~
Unless there are changes introduced by this discussion, the following
actions will take effect after a short grace period:

* A new COMMITTERS file will be added as a simple text file with a list
  of the project's committers.

* The gitlab membership statuses and ability to merge will be adjusted
  so that only committers can merge to protected branches.

* The initial committers will be:

  * Jürg Billeter
  * Benjamin Schubert
  * Chandan Singh
  * Tristan van Berkom

Please feel free to speak up if you think there should be changes to
the initial policy or in whatever is written here, no action will be
taken before Monday June 8th, and of course, we will postpone in the
case that more discussion is needed.


In the end, this is mostly just a bureaucratic process which we need to
follow in some way in order to properly migrate to the ASF, I expect it
will not be much different from what we are doing right now, only a bit
more formalized.

Cheers,
    -Tristan

PS:

I've added Sander on CC here, as he has been a long time technical
guiding force in our project, and a much longer ASF community member
who is also a standing board member: Please correct me in my
paraphrasing of ASF guidelines and let us know if you think this step
is the correct one in it's current form.


[0]: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/buildstream-list/2020-April/msg00010.html
[1]: http://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/#technical
[2]: http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/roles.html#committers