[General Topics] Shreesha.Murthy:
Hello, I would like to answer few of those questions and provide a solution to minimize or possibly overcome.

- Should developers be able to moderate their own threads?

Yes, developers should be able to moderate their own threads, avoids moderator getting spammed.

- How should moderators deal with "annoying" users? What should they do when individual developers don't think we're doing enough to control a problem?

If you're giving moderating powers to developers, this will be avoided in the first place. Do note in mind that developers might take advantage of it and delete bug reports and stuff. But this can be overcome with "state a reason to delete this post".

- Should we allow donation requests? In what form?

Donation is complete unforced thing. Demanding for it or making work exclusive to only donors should be stopped. On the same line, if the developer is doing original developement and has a PayPal or Bitcoin link in his profile and not forcing anyone, will be fine.

- Should we require a developer to get permission before using another developer's work? What happens when one developer is unhappy about the use of his work by another developer?

This is very complicated topic. Yes, the permission should be taken from the original developer. One may argue that they are maintaining maintainership and stuff but that's just for the source. Consider someone doing unofficial builds of an official device, that should be avoided unless the third party developer can provide source proving that there are significant changes.[Excluding change of ToolChain]. If the original developer is found to be unhappy with someone taking away his work and posting, things should be looked on how the code is maintained or presented to the userbase.

- What if Dev 2 made some small tweaks to the code?

Small tweaks are mostly placebo and if they're having huge impact, teach the dev2 to contribute to the original work. Duplicating a thread/work is just filling up trash

- What if Dev 2 made some big tweaks?

Dev2 can either get with the dev1 as said earlier or just maintain his own work/thread "IF" it's a big change, this is opensource and people can tinker around code. If the dev1 is unhappy, he/she is just not getting hang of opensoure

- What if Dev 2 acted as if the code was his and aggressively solicited donations?

This should honestly be avoided. Thread/work should be taken down/locked ASAP and the developer need to address either the code or just have it locked down because of no real changes to original code

- What if dev2 gave proper credit, but still solicited donations?

As stated earlier, donation is not a forced thing. Depends on how the work is displayed to the userbase. This is happening alot with custom ROMs scene. They cherry-pick whatever features they could find and just put them all in one place and call it THEIR "ROM". Although, this is correct techincally, morally? uh no.

- What if Dev 2 posted buggy, in-process code that Dev 1 wasn't ready to release?

Dev1 should have complete control over his code and should have the power to manipulate release. This, again, happens with unreleased ROMs and some random dev2 compiling and posting it. Dev1 should be given importance here

- What if Dev 2 changed the name of the ROM?

As said earlier, source code can be looked upon and further actions can be taken after checking.

- What if Dev 1 has previously given verbal permission but now wants to revoke that permission?

If Dev1 wants to revoke permission, this must be stated in words and should be visible to everyone. Verbal permissions are always hit and miss.

Suggestion:

Introduction of a dev panel or a special group of developers who could look into the source or appeals made by both dev1 and dev2 and then take further actions. This will greatly reduce the flaming and both dev1 and dev2 can get legit reason for the action taken by the mods. These people can also clear confusions of whose work is real or who is copy-pasting code with slight difference

Thank you for letting me voice my opinion and I hope this "Dev Panel" becomes a thing and I can see it in action. :)