----- Original Message ----- My usual statement: The term of "Backup maintainer" is wrong in my opinion. 1. There is nothing emergency in upstream project. 2. Downstream maintainer can always add patches on top of upstream release if there is downstream emergency, this is the reason of having downstream. 3. For small and medium projects there should be only one maintainer, to keep project consistent. 4. Large projects should be modular (components with own release cycle), so for each module single maintainer is assigned. vdsm-jsonrpc-java is a good example of taking a component out of the monolithic engine into a module with own release cycle and own maintainer. 5. If maintainer of component is unresponsive or is not productive, maintainer should be assigned to different person. Regards, Alon