[arch-dev-public] Sizes of repos and maintainers

[Dan McGee]

First, let's get a few numbers out there.
Sizes of official repos:
current: 563
extra: 2019
community: 1196

Number of "maintainers":
Devs: 27
TUs: 25

The second set of numbers is harder to pin down. For devs, I took the
number from the devs page; someone who has been here longer could
better state the breakdown between architectures or between active and
passive. For TU's, I grabbed it from the AUR front page, once again
not knowing how many are active.

Given the above numbers, and this repeats what has been stated
elsewhere by Alexander, devs have roughly 95 packages each
((563+2019)/27) to maintain if the load was distributed evently.
Because we know it is not, Alexander came up with a figure of 16
active maintainers, giving each dev 156 packages. Thats a lot, and it
leaves very little room or time for devs to do anything besides
package maintenance.

Compare this to the TUs workload. Each TU should have roughly 48
packages to maintain, a much more reasonable number and either 1/2 or
1/3 of what a dev is expected to do. This also gives them some time to
patrol the AUR and check packages that haven't made it into community.

Two proposals to let sit in the pot:
1. Downsize extra to a more reasonable size, and move some of the
maintenance to TU's by shifting packages to community. This would
likely require a few more TUs being "hired on".
2. Redefine what it means to be a dev. Have a three-tiered system of
sorts, with increases in permissions to change things as you move up
the ladder. This would basically stick another group between Devs and
TUs that could help maintain the huge number of packages we have in
extra. This would likely require a few more TUs being hired and some
TUs shifted to higher levels of responsibility.

Yes, radical ideas, but don't shoot me for them. Comments appreciated.

-Dan