The hat 'User' states that the following: They contribute to the Apache projects by providing feedback to developers in the form of bug reports and feature suggestions
The hat 'Developer' states that the following: a user who contributes... In general, a user only consumes the work (the software, the documentation, the postings on the mailing list). They aren't active as contributors (in any way, within the community of a project). As soon as a user gets involved in a project (participating in discussions in the mailing list, posting JIRA issues, etc) he becomes a contributor to the project and its work. This person might be a developer or not, a documentalist or not, etc. Having the 'contribute' in both descriptions makes it ambiguous. Removing the aspect of contributing from the hat 'User' partly removes that ambiguity. Renaming the hat 'Developer' to 'Contributor', does the other part. Subsequently, the hat 'Committer' could be redefined with following: A *committer *is a contributor, that was given write access... Regards, Pierre Smits *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* Services & Solutions for Cloud- Based Manufacturing, Professional Services and Retail & Trade http://www.orrtiz.com On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Eric Covener <cove...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > How can it be that 'Contributor' is not an official 'hat'-definition in > the > > (explanatory) pages of the ASF? While so much importance is placed on > > correct usage of terminology in projects and elsewhere, based on those > > pages. > > > > Shouldn't the document > > http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles be amended > (with > > respect to definitons 'User' and 'Developer) in such a way that it > reflects > > that? > > I don't think a generic "Contributor" adds much to that document. What > confusion about the term contributors would the hypothetical update > clarify? >
