On 3/19/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > You say this as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. But is it? > I am quite skeptical. You take as a given that commit privileges have to > be closely guarded, like a high priesthood guards the inner sanctum.
In the general case of *all* open source projects, you can make a case like this. Each project makes their own decisions about how committer status is "earned" or "granted" or whatever. Apache projects have their own individual personalities, but all of them conform to some core operating principles[1] that bind us together. Of particular interest to this thread is how you get to become a committer -- they are nominated, and elected, by the other committers on that project. This has a few interesting implications: * People who contribute a lot, in a positive way, tend to get nominated and voted in. * People who have radical ideas, but contribute in a positive way, can get nominated and voted in (depends on the individual community, but Struts committers are by no means monolithic in their beliefs :-). * People who simply make noise will never get nominated, and therefore never get voted in. (Even if nominated, Apache's rules state that a single -1 from a PMC member is a black ball -- in practice, that means nobody who is likely to get vetoed is going to get nominated, to save that person embarassment). At Apache, committers are a self-selected meritocracy. If you cannot convince existing committers that you belong, then you don't belong. Deal with it. Or go away. Note that convincing can take a while, and sometimes involves creating an entirely revolutionary branch of the code someplace. But it almost always requires more code than words. Craig PS: A perhaps subtle aspect of the rules is that nomination is about people. In my voting practice (and I suspect I am not alone in the Struts world), hiding behind one or more fake email identities is a guaranteed -1 ... because we vote on people, not on ideas. Fortunately, that's never been an issue ... no committer on any Apache project I've been a part of has ever nominated such an identity. But you can take it as a given that no such nomination will succeed here as long as I am a voting member of the Struts community. [1] Start at <http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html> and follow the links on the right margin for details.
