Committers vs. PMC members, and non-code committers (was: List of Inactive Apache Flex PPMC Members)

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 11:13 PM, Michael A. Labriola
<la...@digitalprimates.net> wrote:
> ...What about people who present, write about or educate on Flex? Worked on getting/keeping Flex inside
> of corporations during our transition time to Apache? People raising awareness... you get the point...

I totally agree that you can be a committer and/or PMC member on an
Apache project without ever committing any code - you can be
"committed" to the project in many ways, as you indicate.

> ...If there is one thing I find a little disturbing about the idea of PMC and Committers being the same group is that it seems
> to value code commits above all else....

That should not be the case. Of course, the final goal is to produce
code, but as you say there are various ways to add value to the
project, and it's right to recognize that.

> ...When I first read about Apache I actually thought these were two separate groups most of the time and found it
> slightly disappointing that they seem to be more aligned than not....

Even if someone doesn't usually commit any code, they need an
@apache.org account and they might need to fix the website, docs,
READMEs etc.from time to time, so it does make sense to give them
commit access as well. So you're right that you cannot be a PMC member
without being a committer - but being a committer doesn't necessarily
mean that you commit code.

Hope this clarifies things ;-)

-Bertrand