There is a perception in some circles that Jakarta as a whole, and Jakarta Commons in particular, is too large for sufficient PMC oversight. In my opinion, particularly with respect to Jakarta Commons, this is not the case, but one way to combat that perception is to recognize that although the CVS avail file lists 72 committers for the jakarta-commons repository (see http://cvs.apache.org/~rwaldhoff/jakarta/jakarta-committers.html), not all of those folks are actively working in Jakarta Commons anymore. Removing inactive committers from the avail file (and naming them emeritus committers) is one way to recognize that fact.
The jakarta guidelines state "At times, Committers may go inactive for a variety of reasons. A Committer that has been inactive for 6 months or more may lose their status as a Committer. Getting access back is as simple as re-requesting it on the project's Developer mailing list." <http://jakarta.apache.org/site/roles.html> The following 16 folks are listed in the CVS avail file, but have not made any commits in the past year (since 13 Nov 2002): amamment - Arun Mammen Thomas arron - Arron Bates conor - Conor MacNeill dsale - Doug Sale dwinterfeldt - David Winterfeldt hammant - Paul Hammant husted - Ted Husted jariw - jariw AT hyperlink-interactive DOT co DOT uk jefft - Jeff Turner marcsaeg - Marc Saegesser mas - Michael Smith nacho - Ignacio J. Ortega noel - Noel J. Bergman paulo - Paulo Gaspar serge - Serge Knystautas vmassol - Vincent Massol It may be that some of these folks have been "active" in non-CVS ways, for instance, by posting to the commons-user or commons-dev lists, I haven't checked (nor am I exactly sure how I could programmaticly check that). Removing those 16 would reduce the number of active committers to 56, a more that 20% reduction in the perceived size of jakarta-commons (by that metric at least). Just to clarify, I have no issues with any or all of those folks maintaining access to the jakarta-commons CVS module, nor is this some sort of judgment of a lack of activity (indeed there are a number of folks on that list that I have a lot of respect for). Rather, this is a recognition that those folks have moved on for the time being and an attempt to make the perceived size of Jakarta Commons more accurately reflect the reality of the matter. As the guidelines state, a simple post to commons-dev would be all that is needed to restore direct CVS access and reverse the inactive status. The Proposal: Unless anyone on that list wants to declare themselves "active" right now (or someone else can vouch for some sort of commons related activity in the past year or so), let's invoke that paragraph of the jakarta guidelines and declare these folks "inactive" committers. Specifically, let's: (1) remove those folks from the avail file and (2) add an "emeritus committers" page (or section of some existing page) to the jakarta-commons website that acknowledges their contributions and indicates the mechanism by which they can once again get CVS access. -- - Rod <http://radio.weblogs.com/0122027/> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
