XML Graphics people, Leo Simons made me aware that I may need to make a few things more clear concerning project decisions in our project. The XML Graphics project is not the same as the former XML project Batik and FOP were under. Even though we still maintain separate committer sets for Batik and FOP all project-relevant decisions are made by the PMC, i.e. the binding votes on EVERY vote within this project are only those of the PMC members.
Back when we were operating under the XML umbrella, we believed that the committers were governing the (sub)project. This has been clarified by the board that they are not. Only the PMC can make project decisions [1]. A committer under the clarified rules is someone with write access to the repository. That's basically it, although a committer can make local decisions in code which the PMC accepts with lazy consensus, and it's clear that no voice will simply be overruled when it's no coming from a PMC member. That would be unfair. But as I suggested a number of times, every committer may choose to participate in the PMC. The ASF actually encourages that the set of committers matches the set of PMC members (most apparent in the HTTPD project), but being a PMC members is not without responsibilities. A PMC is supposed to be informed about everything that goes on in the project, not only the corner he's most interested in. This is about oversight, the prime reason why the Board wanted the XML project split up. Based on the information found in [1] the exisiting PMC members invite committers to join the PMC, but I'd say that every non-newbie committer should feel invited to join the PMC if he/she wishes to do so. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles With the recent committer vote on batik-dev I failed to guide Thomas into the right direction by not being strict about handling the vote as an explicit PMC vote. He was right to CC general@ but I didn't make it clear with my vote, for example, that it is actually a PMC thing. My apologies, Thomas. Jeremias Maerki --------------------------------------------------------------------- Apache XML Graphics Project URL: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
