I'll echo everyone else and note that regularly scheduled calls are difficult for me, though I aim to make the one today if it happens.

I aim to steward a small number of PRs through -- or leave them in a known state of "these things remain" -- each month. My observation is that steady if slight presence keeps the Nixpkgs train a-rolling. This is basically the same as emily's observation about an "unreliable SLA" -- if there's steady effort somewhere, it's better than bursty attention everywhere, then nowhere.

There are a lot of models of how to maintain something. Some are more authorial and creative. Others are more negative, rejecting complexity and refining and emphasizing proper scope. Yet others are about stewardship and connection to community and people. I fall into the last camp.

though I aim to make the one today if it happens.

It is still going to happen, 3 minutes.

If the problem is getting PRs reviewed, then one thing that could be done without increasing everybody's workload would be for a volunteer to try to act as a shepherd

I think in this capacity, it would be good if someone does volunteer to do review stuff that there be "office" hours. This would be so the reviewer and PR author could work in real time in tandem. Tom Berek has done this a lot and it's proven to work well it seems.

Other related proposals that involve shipping computational machinery with Nix:

1. System-agnostic builders
2. Nix on WASI
3. libnixstore-pure