Billie,
Here is some background about how other projects treat the issue of contributors and committers. Generally, contributions and elevations of developers to committer status are widely publicized. This is done for a few reasons, the most important of which is to publicly thank the developer for thier hard work. On most Apache Projects, getting a contributor status is done after a developer contributes a patch for documentation or actual code. Committer status usually takes much longer because the PMC's need to trust that the developer won't muck up the codebase. Additionally, there is the concern about "drive by committers". This is someone that only contributes to a project until they get committer status, and then upon achieving that goal doesn't continue to contribute. Each project has its own rules for granting someone "karma" (committer status) but generally speaking, it is only done after a long period of time in which the developer contributes patches that allow the PMC to get to understand how the person codes, unit-tests, and if their contributions are strong. Even then, many projects won't grant committer status until after a developer has contributed a something major to the project, such as a high-level piece of functionality. Again, how contributors are granted karma is something each PMC handles individually, with the only stipulation being that new committers are reflected in the project's quarterly report. For new project like Accumulo that has a strong core of committers, the Apache Software Foundation has a mentorship program. In this program, existing committers to a project join the ASF Mentorship group. Then, when a contributor is identified as a candidate for karma, they work with a mentor to create a mentorship agreement. This agreement outlines the expectations for the contributor and mentor. After the mentorship is complete, the PMC has a good understanding of how the contributor works, their coding ability, and trustworthiness, and whether or not they want to grant committer status to the contributor. In many projects, it is common to see a person granted karma, and soon therafter for them to be voted onto the PMC of that project if they continue to make strong contributions to the codebase. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan D. Cabrera" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 11:04:31 AM Subject: Re: new developer On Nov 15, 2011, at 7:53 AM, Billie J Rinaldi wrote: > On Tuesday, November 15, 2011 10:47:46 AM, "Alan D. Cabrera" > <[email protected]>: >> Yeah, can you check to see if you have admin rights to manage that >> group? > > I do! Oops. :) In the future, do you think I should make an announcement > when I add someone? That's a good idea. When in doubt, err on the side of over broadcasting. :) Regards, Alan
