The Commons charter (http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/charter.html)
currently states (in the Guidelines section):
"17. New packages may be proposed to the Jakarta Commons mailing list. To be
accepted, a package proposal must receive a positive super-majority vote of
the subproject committers. Proposals are to identify the rationale for the
package, its scope, its interaction with other packages and products, the
Commons resources, if any, to be created, the initial source from which the
package is to be created, and the initial set of committers.
"1. The whole number of positive votes needed for a super majority is
calculated by dividing the total number of active subproject committers by
four, multiplying by three, and rounding to the nearest whole number (>= .5
rounds up)."
It has been suggested by several committers that this guideline is
undesirable due to the number of votes required to accept a proposal. (This
suggestion is backed up by the observation that, despite what you see in the
CVS repository, currently no Commons proposal has been accepted according to
this metric.)
Hence I suggest that we amend the commons charter as follows:
Strike out the existing Guideline #17 (and 17.1) and replace it with:
"17. Accepting New Packages and Components
"17.1. New packages may be proposed to the Jakarta Commons mailing list.
Proposals are to identify the rationale for the package, its scope, its
interaction with other packages and products, the Commons resources, if any,
to be created, the initial source from which the package is to be created,
and the initial set of committers.
"17.2. Any Developer may vote on any proposal. However, the only binding
votes are those cast by a Committer to the Commons subproject.
"17.3. Seven days (168 hours) after a proposal is submitted, if it has
received at least three binding +1 votes and no binding -1 votes, the
proposal is accepted.
"17.4. At any time after seven days (168 hours) from the time a proposal is
submitted, if it has received a positive super majority of binding votes
cast, the proposal is accepted.
"17.4.1. The whole number of positive votes needed for a super majority as
described in 17.4 is calculated by dividing the total number of binding
votes cast by four, multiplying by three, and rounding to the nearest whole
number (>= .5 rounds up).
"17.5. If at any time a proposal receives a positive super majority of all
subproject Committers, the proposal is accepted.
"17.5.1. The whole number of positive votes needed for a super majority as
described in 17.5 is calculated by dividing the total number of Commons
subproject Committers by four, multiplying by three, and rounding to the
nearest whole number (>= .5 rounds up)."
Thoughts?
- Rod
