Codeowners

[EwoutH]

I want to suggest a new system to get Mesa moving faster: Codeowners.

Here's a very rough mental jot of my vision on this.

Codeowners are maintainers that have proven to be exceptionally well versed with a certain part of the codebase, having a full overview of both the long-term vision and the integrate details, and often having developed a large part of that codebase themselves. They care deeply about that part and are invested in it. Finally, they have a proven track record as general maintainer to make good calls and use proper development practices.

Code-owners have a few (hard-earned) privileges (which are hard earned):

• They can work, push and merge on that part of the codebase without approvals or reviews. PR+review+approval is still the (highly) recommended way to go most of the time, but we also trust them to make good calls on their own.
• They can veto any changes to their codebase, because often they are the ones that have to maintain it.

and maybe more are we develop those ideas.

Codeowners are appointed by a vote on among the maintainers, which gives them a mandate to be a codeowner. I would propose a two-thirds majority should be needed to be appointed as code-owner, which currently estates to 4/6, including that person himself. If at any point there isn't a two-thirds majority anymore, codeownership can be retracted.