Just some notes looking at Apache Governance. No meaning here - just notes.
When in doubt, look to Apache. The essential power over all in the technical domain is in the hands of the PMC Chair.
High level concepts to get the gist based on mail discussions:
http://www.mail-archive.com/community@apache.org/msg03961.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/community@apache.org/msg04005.html
About the most explicit statment w.r.t. becoming a committer I could find:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/contributing.html
This is only one person's opinion. A small excerpt: "...At some point, when it is evident that you're not a bozo :-), you can get nominated for committer status and voted on by the developer community, and then be able to post the changes directly yourself.";
In summary - there are no pre-negotiated rules. This done by a flow of a value system from the top - not a careful constitution which spells out all the precise details.
ASF Bylaws
The bylaws of the Apache Foundation do not mention the word committer at all.
http://www.apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html
The ASF bylaws establish that there will be project management committees. The board retains no rights w.r.t. the PMC other than the right to disband it.
Section 6.3. Project Management Committees. In addition to the officers of the corporation, the Board of Directors may, by resolution, establish one or more Project Management Committees consisting of at least one officer of the corporation, who shall be designated chairman of such committee, and may include one or more other members of the corporation. Unless elected or appointed as an officer in accordance with Sections 6.1 and 6.4 of these Bylaws, a member of a Project Management Committee shall not be deemed an officer of the corporation.
Each Project Management Committee shall be responsible for the active management of one or more projects identified by resolution of the Board of Directors which may include, without limitation, the creation or maintenance of "open-source" software for distribution to the public at no charge. Subject to the direction of the Board of Directors, the chairman of each Project Management Committee shall be primarily responsible for project(s) managed by such committee, and he or she shall establish rules and procedures for the day to day management of project(s) for which the committee is responsible.
The Board of Directors of the corporation may, by resolution, terminate a Project Management Committee at any time.
The rules for making a PMC are as follows:
http://www.apache.org/dev/project-creation.html
You will also need to determine bylaws and guidelines, including:
• Project procedures (CTR vs RTC? release management? etc)
• Voting procedures
• Committer access process
• PMC membership process
Jakarta's Charter:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/management.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/decisions.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/roles.html
Excerpt:
In order for a Contributor to become a Committer, another Committer can nominate that Contributor or the Contributor can ask for it.
Once a Contributor is nominated, all of the Committers for a subproject will vote. If there are at least 3 positive votes and no negative votes, the Contributor is converted into a Committer and given write access to the source code repository for that subproject.
Apache Logging's Charter:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/decisions.html
Committer access is by invitation only and must be approved by lazy consensus of the active PMC members. A Committer is considered emeritus by their own declaration or by not contributing in any form to the project for over six months. An emeritus committer may request reinstatement of commit access from the PMC. Such reinstatement is subject to lazy consensus of active PMC members.
http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy
Posted by csev at September 3, 2005 09:32 AM