I want to share a conversation that I hope sheds some light on what it means to be on the PMC.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who said

"I fear additional responsibility".

I told him that he should have nothing to fear, as what's being asked for is that the committers simply continue to pay attention. His response was

"paying attention is a _big_ responsibility"

"That's true", I thought. So I told him

"but if you are interested in the project you are going to do that anyway. IOW, most committers are paying attention to what's coming in"

"jakarta is just so big though"

Aha!

Being on the PMC doesn't mean you have to watch *every* commit in *every* project. The requirement of the PMC is that it, as a committee delegated oversight authority by the board, is responsible as a *group* for that oversight. If we can organize ourselves so that there is coverage that to an outside observer would be deemed reasonable and effective, then we satisfy the needs of the ASF. (The board could void this interpretation, but so far has indicated that it wouldn't).

So this person, who participates in <foo> and some components of Jakarta Commons, would just continue to do what he normally does - participate as he does already.

The only difference is that we would do our job and ensure that he understands the rules about contributions, CLAs, and what code contributions require the Incubator for IP accountability. ( Incubator => Largish contributions from outside of the ASF. Largish is loosely defined : Small patch- and file-sized commits and contributions don't need Incubator, an entire database project from Oracle does. The line is somewhere in the middle :)

Anyway, I hope this example helps. It certainly gave me insight into what this individual was struggling with, and I assume that he isn't the only one...

geir

--
Geir Magnusson Jr 203-247-1713(m)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



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