> On Jul 22, 2026, at 8:53 AM, Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
> On 22 Jul 2026, at 12:46, Rich Bowen <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 05:02 Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>> First - I'd be wary of this as a concept - we are all volunteers -- being
>>> asked to join the PMC is both a trust thing -and- also something of an
>>> imposition or burden on that volunteer. They get extra responsibility and
>>> work. So - really -- not a promotion at all.
>>
>> Surely that's literally what a promotion is? What's a job promotion - more
>> responsibility and work along with extra trust or privilege.
>
> This may be a cultural/language thing - but for me, the word promotion, is
> something akin to a higher step of a ladder, higher up in a hierarchy - where
> your output, word, work, etc is of more value than that of others - and where
> you get to command and delegate. Or when a call is to be made - the one with
> the promition makes it - is -expected- to amke it.
Yes. And that is exactly the case with committers and PMC members. And we
*explicitly* call it a ladder on the community.apache.org
<http://community.apache.org/> website.
https://community.apache.org/contributor-ladder.html This is language that is
used across the entire open source ecosystem.
https://ospoglossary.todogroup.org/contributor-ladder/
https://contribute.cncf.io/projects/best-practices/community/contributor-growth/incentivizing-contributors/
https://forum.opensearch.org/t/proposal-contributor-ladder-aka-how-can-someone-become-a-maintainer/5759
I don’t see this as derogatory in any way. It’s encouragement for contributors
to become owners. It’s the incentive we offer for that ownership.
I don’t think any first-time contributor expects that their contributions will
be accepted blindly without skepticism. They have to earn that trust. This is
pretty central to our messaging at the ASF, and always has been. Merit is
earned. We use that phrasing everywhere and have for decades.
That does not mean, though, that the work is of more *value*, simply that the
trust hasn’t been earned yet. We *should* encourage people to earn trust, and
not expect that on day one they’ll be trusted with the reins. They have to grow
up to that. We all started at that level.
>
> They are sort of the opposite of a merit/expertise specialist of volunteers
> all doing peer to peer what each is good at / contributes to.
I disagree. Committers *do* have more merit, because they have demonstrated and
earned it. That’s what becoming a committer acknowledges. I’m not sure why we
would want to downplay that.
>
>> Promotion never means that you're somehow a better or more valuable person,
>> does it? In what context would it mean that?
>
> It may not mean that in American -- but to my foreign ear - that is exactly
> how it echos - a person that is `somehow more, better, etc'
Well, they are more. They have more trust, more merit, more experience, and
more ownership.
“Better” is a loaded word here, and not one that I would use. But they have
demonstrated leadership, trust, and ownership. Those that do the work *do* get
to make the decisions. They *do* get more authority. They are, in fact, more.
That doesn’t mean that other contributors are somehow incompetent or terrible
or bad, just that they have not demonstrated that ownership and trust yet.
We use the phrase “those that do the work get to make the decisions” across all
of our ASF discussions, and, again, have for decades. The term “Do-ocracy” is
another one that we’ve used. Everyone has the opportunity to get those
promotions, they just haven’t yet. That doesn’t make them better or worse. It
makes them new or experienced.
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