Geir has proposed that we create practice PMCs (a.k.a. subprojects) as part of incubation, and that we call them "Project Committers" lists rather than PMCs. I am +1 on the notion in general, but I would prefer to call them core groups instead. My rationale is that "committer" privilege is a mechanism that we frequently give to people on the basis of what they are planning to do, whereas the core group are those people who have earned long-term voting rights whether or not they happen to code. Jakarta got into a weird state wherein committer == voter and commit-access was given out like candy, thus leading to the notion that committers run ASF projects. I don't believe it is appropriate to link voting with cvs access.
I know of a case where an individual identified a code base that he avowed that he would never contribute to but active sought voting privileges to that codebase so that he could block items that he felt was harmful. To me, requiring people to actually participate in the solution to problems that they identify is a good check and balance.
I also can't imagine a more profound way of voting on the direction that a project can take than by actually doing the work. In fact, that is the essense of what at Apache appeals to me: whenever possible the responsibility for any given item is pushed down to the people who actually are doing the work.
Teasing apart these two concepts is difficult. Let's face it: any formal system that we try to apply to the real world is going to have anomolies. Officers who aren't members. Members who contribute in ways other than code.
I for one, would rather we not focus on the exceptions, and try to make things more uniform - even if that ends up with giving people who have the right to vote the right to commit. After all, if we trust them enough to vote, we should trust them enough to NOT commit changes that they are not qualified to make.
- Sam Ruby
P.S. Can somebody explain to me why a number of core members of the HTTPD community feel so threatened by the non-HTTPD PMCS (generally lumped into the generic category of "Jakarta") that they feel the need to bash it at every opporunity? It gets tiresome.
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