A Message from the Board to PMC members

[Rich Bowen <rb...@apache.org>]

Dear Apache Project Management Committee (PMC) members,

The Board wants to take just a moment of your time to communicate a few things that seem to have been forgotten by a number of PMC members, across the Foundation, over the past few years.  Please note that this is being sent to all projects - yours has not been singled out.

The Project Management Committee (PMC) as a whole[1] is tasked with the oversight, health, and sustainability of the project. The PMC members are responsible collectively, and individually, for ensuring that the project operates in a way that is in line with ASF philosophy, and in a way that serves the developers and users of the project.

The PMC Chair is not the project leader, in any sense. It is the person who files board reports and makes sure they are delivered on time. It is the secretary for the project, and the project’s  ambassador to the Board of Directors. The VP title is given as an artifact of US corporate law, and not because the PMC Chair has any special powers. If you are treating your PMC Chair as the project lead, or granting them any other special powers or privileges, you need to be aware that that’s not the intent of the Chair role. The Chair is a PMC member peer with a few extra duties.

Every PMC member has an equal voice in deliberations. Each has one vote. Each has veto power. Every vote weighs the same. It is not only your right, but it is your obligation, to use that vote for the good of the project and its users, not to appease the Chair, your employer, or any other voice in the project. 

Every PMC member can, and should, nominate new committers, and new PMC members. This is not the sole domain of the PMC Chair. This might be your most important responsibility to the project, as succession planning is the path to sustainability.

Every PMC member can, and should, respond when the Board sends email to your private list. You should not wait for the PMC Chair to respond. The Board views the entire PMC as responsible for the project, not just one member.

Every PMC member should be subscribed to the private@ mailing list. If you are not, then you are neglecting your duty of oversight. If you no longer wish to be responsible for oversight of the project, you should resign your PMC seat, not merely drop off of the private@ list and ignore it. You can determine which PMC members are not subscribed to your private list by looking at your PMC roster at https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/committee/  Names with an asterisk (*) next to them are not subscribed to the list. We encourage you to take a moment to contact them with this information.

Thank you for your attention to these matters, and thank you for keeping our projects healthy.

Rich, for The Board of Directors

[1] https://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#pmc-members

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