Current status of LTS group/ backporters

[marco-ippolito]

Quoting documentation https://github.com/nodejs/Release/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md:

LTS:

For releasing on LTS release lines, releasers must:

Be added as members of the GitHub [LTS team](https://github.com/orgs/nodejs/teams/lts)
Fully release at least one Current Node.js release; for practice, and to help promote the new GPG key to the user ecosystem prior to it being required to verify an LTS release

Backporters https://github.com/nodejs/Release?tab=readme-ov-file#lts-staging-branches:

Only members of @nodejs/backporters should land commits onto staging branches.

Currently we are not enforcing both of these rules.
I think we should remove the LTS team and keep only releasers, and keep the backporters for people who want to start getting involved with the release working group and can prepare current releases.

[richardlau]

There's some previous discussion in #912. That also proposed removing backporters.

As I mentioned in #912 (comment) the LTS team has never been, as far as I am aware, an access control team. releasers and backporters are access control teams (e.g. being in releasers would get you access to the release CI and backporters have permissions to push to the LTS staging branches).

I think it's fair to have a discussion as to whether the LTS team serves a purpose today. Our README currently says:

Release/README.md

Lines 93 to 95 in 17c98b4

	The Long Term Support (LTS) team manages the process/content of LTS releases
	and the required backporting for these releases. Additions to the LTS
	team needs sign off from the rest of the LTS team.

and I guess it's debatable whether you can manage the process/content for releases without being a releaser or backporter. You could certainly have an opinion on what could/should be in a LTS release line and how often releases should happen as a general consumer of Node.js.

One thing I would stress is that membership of the Release WG does not equate to being a releaser:

Release/README.md

Lines 81 to 87 in 17c98b4

	The Release working group is structured into teams and membership in
	the working group does not automatically result in membership in these
	teams. These teams are:
	* Releasers team
	* LTS team
	* CITGM team

[marco-ippolito]

In meeting #1026 we had consensus about removing the @nodejs/lts team, and merge it into @nodejs/releasers