Project Governance / External Contributions

[Nathaniel McCallum]

Given the recent announcement of the retiring of the MIT KIT
consortium, I would like to inquire about two aspects of the MIT krb5
project that seems somewhat undefined to me.

First, how will the project decide which features to adopt in the
future going forward? Previously, external contributors had recourse
by subscribing to KIT. This obviously had the problem that votes == $.
I am glad MIT is seeking to correct this. However, it is less clear to
me what the governance model will be going forward. For instance, who
will decide whether or not a certain feature appearing on the list will
be merged? Do organizations other than the Institute get a say in this
process?

Second, is there any plan to decentralize commit access to the project?
Again, without the KIT consortium, should difficulties arise in timely
patch review and approval, external contributors are entirely reliant
on the MIT for review and committing. Moving forward, will there be a
process by which proven external contributors can gain commit
priviledges (following an appropriate public review policy, of course)?

I think that the MIT has an opportunity here to demonstrate leadership
in open source project governance; and Red Hat is happy to lend its
experience in this area to this process.