Project:Retirement/For developers

What does retirement imply?
The process of retirement means suspending the developer's account, as well as all related perks. This normally involves:
 * Removing the developer from all packages and projects, and reassigning all bugs appropriately.
 * Removing commit access to gentoo.git, project repositories and disabling the developer overlay.
 * Disabling access to dev.gentoo.org and other Gentoo machines.
 * Disabling access to the Gentoo mail system. The developer's mailbox remains active for up to 6 months (1 month for every year as developer, rounded up), either forwarding mail to another address or storing it for future retrieval.  Please contact Infra to get your mails and/or change forwarding setup.
 * Removing developer from all mailing lists.
 * Disabling developer's Bugzilla account. You need to open a new account if you wish to continue using Bugzilla.
 * Removing developer status and privileges from Forums and Wiki.
 * Removing developer's blog from Planet/Universe, disabling Gentoo blogs account and disabling comments on any posts created using this account.
 * Removing developer's IRC cloak (replaced with 'unaffiliated').

If you wish to change some of the above events (e.g. forward mail to a different address than in LDAP, become proxied maintainer for your packages, etc.), please contact undertakers prior to retirement.

How do Undertakers determine activity?
For the purposes of inactivity retirement, Undertakers determine the activity of each developer individually. The exact measures used depend on the roles and perks of the developer in question, and may include:
 * gentoo.git or other user-oriented repository commits,
 * developer-related Bugzilla activity (e.g. reporting bugs as user does not count),
 * Forum activity (in case of Forum moderators),
 * GLSA releases and security bug processing (in case of Security project members).

For developers with commit access, the primary venue of contributing is through commits. If you no longer maintain ebuilds but instead wish to focus on contributing through other venues, we can remove your commit access bit on request.

For developer without commit access, we generally look at gentooRoles in LDAP, so please keep that up-to-date.

Please understand that we're just humans with limited time, and we can't spend it all looking for hidden signs of activity. It is entirely possible that we miss something, so please tell us in reply to the retirement mail if we do.

Developer unavailability (devaway)
If you expect to be unavailable for some time, please remember to set up devaway. A good devaway message includes:
 * how you can be contacted if necessary,
 * what to do with your packages,
 * when do you expect to be back.

If you can't set up devaway yourself, feel free to ask us to do it for you. If you expect to be unavailable through a long period of time, you can also request us to temporarily disable your commit access (to be restored on request).

We naturally delay inactivity retirement while developer is explicitly away. However, please note that we are not going to honor devaway forever, and if developer is not able to return within reasonable time, we will proceed with retirement. If you have specific problems that justify longer devaway period, please tell us (no need for details but we need to distinguish personal problems from lack of time).

Retirement bugs and Undertaker procedures
Undertakers rely on the specific state of developer bugs in their proceedings. Please don't change it yourself.

We check developers for inactivity periodically. As a result of this check, we reopen developer bugs, change their summaries and reassign them. Afterwards, we usually recheck your status at the next deadlines specified by the retirement procedure. If you became active again yet your bug is still open, don't panic — it just means we haven't got the opportunity to recheck yet. Please don't close the bug yourself or nag us— we will eventually get to it.

Once we notice that the developer is active again, we close the bug WONTFIX. Please do not reassign them back to Recruiters.

Appeals on Undertaker decisions
We are just humans, we can make mistakes. If you believe that we're missed something or that we're wrong about something, please do not hesitate to contact us. However, if there is a clear disagreement between you and Undertakers, you have the right to appeal our decisions.


 * 1) The appeal is made to ComRel.  If either of us disagree with ComRel's resolution, it can be further appealed to the Council.
 * 2) Undertaker decisions can be appealed no earlier than one month before the planned execution date (i.e. after receiving the fourth mail).
 * 3) Throughout the appeal process, the pending retirement is suspended.  If the appeal is made after the developer is retired, the developer remains retired throught the process.  The appeal process is considered finished if either:
 * 4) * the Council issues final decision,
 * 5) * the ComRel resolution is not appealed to the Council within 7 days,
 * 6) * both sides agree not to appeal further.
 * 7) The appeal process resolves each case individually based on existing policies.  While it may influence future policies, those need to be carried out via appropriate policy making channels.