From 81c3a74aaea12bc72bb208878c43a42a90159a2f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ronny Pfannschmidt Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:08:26 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Doc: commit access follows demonstrated judgement, not a single clean PR Since 4c62cd451 (2016) the "Joining the Development Team" section has promised commit access to anyone who saw a pull request through that did not require extra work from the team, and invited contributors to remind us if we forgot to ask. That rule was sound when it was written. It was never really about the single pull request -- it was a proxy. Pushing something significant through in one shot meant a contributor had already developed a sense for the project, so by the time they cleared the bar they were effectively established, and handing them the commit bit only made official what was already true. The proxy no longer holds. The project carries considerably more responsibility than it did, so merge rights weigh more; and with capable agents, producing a pull request that merges without back and forth no longer demonstrates the sensibilities the rule was standing in for. Say what we actually go by: a developed sense for the project's scope, conventions and the cost of a change, shown across contributions, reviews and discussions -- and an invitation we extend rather than a bar contributors clear on demand. The "send a friendly reminder" line goes with it, since it directly invited the ask, replaced by a note that not having been asked yet is not a verdict on anyone's work. The section itself stays short and says only what we go by; the account of what changed and why lives here rather than in the document, so the policy can shift again without a paper trail accumulating in CONTRIBUTING.rst. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) --- CONTRIBUTING.rst | 21 ++++++++++++--------- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst index f761922a264..8439c3163b4 100644 --- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst +++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst @@ -468,15 +468,18 @@ If in doubt, go ahead and open a PR with your best guess and we can discuss this Joining the Development Team ---------------------------- -Anyone who has successfully seen through a pull request which did not -require any extra work from the development team to merge will -themselves gain commit access if they so wish (if we forget to ask please send a friendly -reminder). This does not mean there is any change in your contribution workflow: -everyone goes through the same pull-request-and-review process and -no-one merges their own pull requests unless already approved. It does however mean you can -participate in the development process more fully since you can merge -pull requests from other contributors yourself after having reviewed -them. +Commit access is an invitation the development team extends once a contributor +has shown a developed sense for the project -- its scope, its conventions, and +what a change costs the people who depend on it. We look for that across +contributions, reviews and discussions rather than in any single pull request, +so there is nothing to clear on demand; if we haven't reached out yet, that is +not a verdict on your work -- sometimes no-one has thought to offer. + +The invitation does not change how you contribute: everyone goes through the +same pull-request-and-review process, and no-one merges their own pull requests +unless already approved. It does mean you can take a fuller part in the +development process, since you can merge other contributors' pull requests once +you have reviewed them. Merge/squash guidelines