On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 02:50:05PM -0700, Krishna Yenduri wrote:
> Personally, I didn't know an important part of participating in Open
> Solaris
> is getting a contributor status. I am sure there are others who
> are in the same boat.
It's not. If the Community Groups to which you've contributed are
functioning properly, they should proactively recognise you as a
Contributor. The Constitution actually requires this in many cases.
> I recommend we educate and encourage all the registered OpenSolaris members
> to seek contributor status. May be a monthly reminder email on the
> mailing list for each community?
No. This is not correct. Contributors are, at risk of sounding glib,
those who have contributed. Most registered users ("Participants" in
the Constitution) have not in fact contributed anything and should not
be recognised as such. Instead of thinking of it as a "status" it may
be better to think of it as a certificate of appreciation or even
something as simple as a heartfelt "thank you" from a Community Group.
No more, and no less. Sections 3.3, 7.7, and 7.8 in the Constitution
describe these terms.
The use of Contributor status as an access control is contrary to
constitutional intent: it's supposed to be an effect of, not a
prerequisite to, one's contributions. That said, since no one else
has volunteered to work on federated identity management or even
enhancements to the code review tool to make it more widely
accessible, I don't think it's fair to complain about what we have now
- without Dan's efforts, we'd have nothing at all.
--
Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!"
FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
