back to article GitHub acknowledges autocrats with 'code owner' feature

GitHub's taken a leaf out of Google's Chromium book, introducing a feature that puts review requirements under the control of someone designated as a code owner. Either individuals or teams can be code owners, responsible for a given slab of software and notified whenever someone makes a pull request. Those who hold the …

  1. Nick Kew

    Dogsbodies

    Methinks the point of code owners isn't so much to grant power as responsibility.

    In the absence of an owner, bug reports and such things can languish unloved as noone takes responsibility. Especially the kind of report that takes time and effort to distinguish from luser error. Whereas if I specifically own a component, I'll step up to those issues. And - conversely - spend less of my time dithering over someone else's issues, unless I have a very clear interest.

  2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Maintenance?

    I'm not sure that Chromium is such a good example for many open source projects because of the resources that Google is prepared to devote to it.

    Typical open source projects have high degrees of churn and fluctuation so a list like this is going to need maintenance and who's going to do that?

    1. Nick Kew

      Re: Maintenance?

      That's well-established in a lot of open source projects. When you want to step down from a role, you resign. The community nominates or elects someone else. Handover happens.

      This is one area where opensource wins hands-down over a typical commercial model, where a person stepping in to a role may have a steep learning curve.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Maintenance?

        The community nominates or elects someone else. Handover happens.

        This only happens for well-resourced projects. There are plenty projects with just one or two contributors and lots that have been more or less abandoned.

    2. bluesxman
      Trollface

      Re: Maintenance?

      a list like this is going to need maintenance and who's going to do that?

      The owner of CODEOWNERS, obviously.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too complicated

    This is way too complicated for autocrats ;-)

    You need to dumb it down a bit github!

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