committer and pmc requirements

[Jay Kreps <ja...@gmail.com>]

Hey All,

One thing suggested to us by our Apache mentors was to formalize the
criteria for becoming a committer and pmc member. Different projects have
different criteria in this regard. What are people's thoughts in this
regard?

FWIW, here are my thoughts. I would suggest we hold a high bar on technical
capability but a fairly low bar on level of contribution. I think 3+
substantive patches plus an interest in ongoing involvement should be
enough. I think this is more appropriate to a young project such as
ourselves. Since we do blocking code reviews for both committers and
non-committers this doesn't put us at too much risk of weak code creeping
in. I don't have any thoughts on what would be a good standard for PMC
membership. It might also be a good idea to make people "committers
emeritus" after 6-12 months of inactivity. I have found on past projects
that committers tend to accumulate to the point where a substantial portion
of people are not active which is probably not the right thing for Apache
since things are decided by voting.

What do others think? Any past experiences of this "done right"?

-Jay

Re: committer and pmc requirements

["Alan D. Cabrera" <li...@toolazydogs.com>]

My personal thoughts on emeritus:

Why emeritus?  I think that it's important for people who are evaluating the community to have an accurate sense of about how active the community is in terms of committers and PMC members.  With that in mind I think that the emeritus status/process should be a pain free, non-punative, process where by emeritus members can be instantly reactivated at solely their own request, i.e. there is no evaluation or vote to reactivate them.


Regards,
Alan

On Mar 25, 2012, at 6:52 PM, Chris Burroughs wrote:

> Where Jay has set the bar for now sounds good to me.  Yeah
> review-before-commit!
> 
> I think the long term goal of committers == PMC is the right one.  While
> I am not sure if they have it set as formal policy it seems common on
> projects I have observed for new committers to become PMC members $n$
> months later.  Being a solid active committer for (say) 3 months is good
> enough for me.  But keeping the initial committer/PMC votes separate
> lets us keep flexibility to adjust the committer requirements without
> worrying about PMC ones.
> 
> +1 on stating a formal emeritus policy up front (but keeping a
> relatively long timeout, other projects can easily consume a quarter).
> 
> On 03/14/2012 12:14 AM, Jay Kreps wrote:
>> Hey All,
>> 
>> One thing suggested to us by our Apache mentors was to formalize the
>> criteria for becoming a committer and pmc member. Different projects have
>> different criteria in this regard. What are people's thoughts in this
>> regard?
>> 
>> FWIW, here are my thoughts. I would suggest we hold a high bar on technical
>> capability but a fairly low bar on level of contribution. I think 3+
>> substantive patches plus an interest in ongoing involvement should be
>> enough. I think this is more appropriate to a young project such as
>> ourselves. Since we do blocking code reviews for both committers and
>> non-committers this doesn't put us at too much risk of weak code creeping
>> in. I don't have any thoughts on what would be a good standard for PMC
>> membership. It might also be a good idea to make people "committers
>> emeritus" after 6-12 months of inactivity. I have found on past projects
>> that committers tend to accumulate to the point where a substantial portion
>> of people are not active which is probably not the right thing for Apache
>> since things are decided by voting.
>> 
>> What do others think? Any past experiences of this "done right"?
>> 
>> -Jay
>> 
> 

Re: committer and pmc requirements

[Chris Burroughs <ch...@gmail.com>]

Where Jay has set the bar for now sounds good to me.  Yeah
review-before-commit!

I think the long term goal of committers == PMC is the right one.  While
I am not sure if they have it set as formal policy it seems common on
projects I have observed for new committers to become PMC members $n$
months later.  Being a solid active committer for (say) 3 months is good
enough for me.  But keeping the initial committer/PMC votes separate
lets us keep flexibility to adjust the committer requirements without
worrying about PMC ones.

+1 on stating a formal emeritus policy up front (but keeping a
relatively long timeout, other projects can easily consume a quarter).

On 03/14/2012 12:14 AM, Jay Kreps wrote:
> Hey All,
> 
> One thing suggested to us by our Apache mentors was to formalize the
> criteria for becoming a committer and pmc member. Different projects have
> different criteria in this regard. What are people's thoughts in this
> regard?
> 
> FWIW, here are my thoughts. I would suggest we hold a high bar on technical
> capability but a fairly low bar on level of contribution. I think 3+
> substantive patches plus an interest in ongoing involvement should be
> enough. I think this is more appropriate to a young project such as
> ourselves. Since we do blocking code reviews for both committers and
> non-committers this doesn't put us at too much risk of weak code creeping
> in. I don't have any thoughts on what would be a good standard for PMC
> membership. It might also be a good idea to make people "committers
> emeritus" after 6-12 months of inactivity. I have found on past projects
> that committers tend to accumulate to the point where a substantial portion
> of people are not active which is probably not the right thing for Apache
> since things are decided by voting.
> 
> What do others think? Any past experiences of this "done right"?
> 
> -Jay
>