On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 3:26 AM, Shane Curcuru <a...@shanecurcuru.org> wrote:
> I had a few comments (I previously sent to another list) about PPMC vs. > committer sets (i.e. either offering commit separately, or only in > conjunction with PPMC membership): > > Note that making the distinction (or not) is strictly up to the project. > There are plenty of Apache projects on each side of this equation. > > ... > > Fundamentally, committers are people who are trusted to work on the code > directly. Note that in larger projects, there are sometimes social rules > that determine which specific modules a committer is expected to work on; > they usually work quite well once established. I.e. a committer on the file > system technically could commit everywhere, but is expected (socially) to > submit patches to other code modules for review. > > ... > > PMC members are responsible for voting in new committers and/or PMC > members, and ensuring releases are done properly under Apache rules. > Typically they do have a broader scope within the project, but not > necessarily; there are plenty of PMC members who have only ever worked in > one module of a larger project - but who have also tested, voted on, and run > releases of the whole project. PMC members should also assist the PMC chair > with creating board reports. > > Any committer can be a release manager, but only PMC members cast binding > votes on confirming a software release itself. > > Personally, with such a large and diverse project, I think it would be > useful to make the distinction between the two groups. There are plenty of > people who would be happy to just be involved as a committer - probably > plenty who would really only be interested in committing to certain areas. > > To answer a question elsethread: > > Dave Fisher wrote: > >> It is not that I don't think this topic is important, but I think a >> more important discussion is what parts of the project might require >> direct PPMC member involvement as opposed to merely questioning and >> having appropriate transparency into all parts to provide oversight. >> Do we need a PPMC member directly administrating forums and wikis? Do >> we need the PPMC to provide a generally "Lazy Consensus" approval of >> committers and other contributors filling roles within the Forum or >> Wiki administration? Should the PPMC require certain parts of the >> community to report status periodically? >> >> Depending on how these questions are answered may give examples of >> special cases where Committer status only is appropriate. For example >> and assuming that the User Forums choose to join this project, should >> we require that all Admins be made into Committers and PPMC members, >> or that we only need 3? Or something in between? (Leave aside the >> iCLA question which could be handled of Terms of Use.) >> > > Personally, I don't see that Forum staff necessarily need to be on the > PPMC; they don't need to vote on releases, so it's not necessary. I would > (hope) that some of the Forum staff (admins and possibly top moderators) > would be invited to the PPMC because of their influence on the project and > their clear history of helping. > > What's more important is that some members of the PPMC (either existing > staff or just existing Apache PPMC members) have read-access to everything > on the forums, so they could show oversight of what's happening there. > > I don't see that we need PPMC members to do any of the day-to-day work in > the forums. Any major policy changes or the like in the forums would be > subject to approval by the PPMC (although I don't expect that would ever be > an issue). Someone (doesn't actually have to be a PPMC member) would need > to provide a general report on the forum activity and call out if there are > any issues in the quarterly report that the PPMC needs to provide to the > Incubator(now) / to the Board(in the future). > > Make sense? > for me that makes a lot of sense Juergen > > And iCLAs are strictly required of any committer or PPMC member. But I > don't see that they'd be required of any forum users or admins simply > because of their forum roles. Remember: working on the code that runs the > forum does not necessarily require an iCLA/committer because that code is > not (presumably) planned to ship in an Apache product. Although anyone > working on code running on Apache machines would find it much easier if they > had a committer account. > > - Shane > > P.S. Thanks Dennis! >
