If you read posts to this list carefully, or looked at Guile's ChangeLog files, you've probably noticed that a few people seem to have direct access to the Guile development sources. I thought I should explain publicly what guidelines I've been following in granting this access.

Guile's arrangement resembles the one Cyclic Software used for the CVS sources, and independently developed by the GNUstep group. I believe NetBSD, FreeBSD, and the Apache project have similar arrangements, some more structured than others.

To be invited into the Guile source access group:

• You need to submit several sizable, well-designed, documented changes to the Guile sources, and it should seem likely that you'll continue to do so in the future.
• I need to feel that I could work well with you (e.g., you're willing to explain things patiently to me).
• There should be no major objections from the current group members.

The group is a way for me to avoid interfering with people who do consistently good work on Guile. It's not a form of recognition; people maintaining packages or contributing ideas and criticism are obviously valuable, but don't need source access. It's not a power boundary; Guile isn't a democracy; I need to reserve the right to make final decisions for myself, because I am the only one responsible to the FSF. The group is just an optimization.

It would be nice to base membership on a person's technical merits alone, but I include personal factors in the qualifications because, in others' experience, it's very difficult to kick people out of these groups. Doing so creates splinter groups. It's usually easier, and arguably better for the system, to just live with the people you invite, and invite people you can live with.

There is an internal mailing list for use by the people with direct source access. This list carries developers' trivia that the general public doesn't care about, and also carries some discussion. However, I consider the public Guile list a better representation of the Guile user community, and try to take advantage of that when appropriate.

In summary: if you're doing a lot of work on Guile, please go ahead and submit patches, to me or to the public list. If I think it would help Guile, we can arrange to make the process a lot simpler for you.