@feanil Makes sense to me
To simplify the commitment, I liked the way @e0d suggested capturing a complexity factor for the repositories being maintained, to estimate the volume of recurrent work.
I don’t know of anyone abusing their power. When I suggest to apply existing rules to everyone for acquiring merge rights, I don’t mean removing anyone’s existing merge rights, it could make sense to grandfather in existing permissions. But for new people or new employees joining the project, getting everyone to acquire merge rights like everyone else in the community, by becoming a core contributor or a maintainer. Everyone could still get permissions like before, but would have to go through the community process/training. If we are going to ask the community as a whole to step up our contribution to the project maintenance, putting ourselves on equal footing proportional to our contribution level would be a good way to align incentives.