Add Library Registry access control system

[per1234]

Background

The Arduino Library Registry repository receives thousands of pull requests from a large number of community contributors. The great majority of these contributors behave in a responsible manner. Unfortunately this repository is regularly the subject of irresponsible behavior. The small number of people who behave irresponsibly consume a significant amount of the finite maintenance resources available for maintenance of Arduino's repositories.

Communication is always the first measure taken in these cases. This is done automatically by the bot, and then by the registry maintainer when it becomes clear that the user has disregarded the comments from the bot. Unfortunately it is regularly the case that the user simply disregards all communication and continues their pattern of irresponsible behavior unchecked.

Alternatives

GitHub provides tools for dealing with harmful behavior:

• Report user
• Block user

Reporting a user is the appropriate measure in cases of malicious behavior, and the account is usually banned from the site relatively quickly after a legitimate report is made. However, the irresponsible behavior in the registry repository is not overtly malicious and so reporting the user in these cases would not be appropriate or effective.

At first glance, the block feature seems ideal. However, it can only be done at an organization-wide level, and by an organization administrator. The repository maintainer is not an organization administrator, so this makes the feature inconvenient to use. There is no sign of these users interacting with other repositories in the arduino organization, and so there is no benefit to blocking them at organization scope. In addition, in order to make it more difficult to circumvent the access restriction, we need the ability to block requests for libraries owned by an entity who has established a pattern of irresponsible behavior, regardless of which user submits the request.

So the tools provided by GitHub are not suitable and a bespoke system must be implemented.

Access Levels

• Allow: the user may submit requests for any library, even if registry privileges have been revoked for the owner of the library's repository. This access level will only be granted to registry maintainers, in order to allow them to make exceptions for specific libraries owned by an entity whose privileges have been revoked.
• Default: the user may submit requests for any library, unless registry privileges have been revoked for the owner of the library's repository.
• Deny: the user may not submit requests. Requests from users with "default" access level for any library repository owned by the entity (user or organization) are denied.