There are 450 people with commit access. Each one of them can put something in our servers that can screw the ASF, including web sites.
Why is this any different?
Because of community oversight. There are no mechanisms within the ASF that allow an individual any degree of freedom without some degree of oversight and mandated collaboration. For example, no release can be made without three committers approving it. For example, all CVS commit message end up at some mailing list where the interested participants review them. For better or worse, all of our processes are designed to limit the ability of a single person to corrupt the ASF or its projects.
That's the benefit of the ASF - this isn't SourceForge where a person can do something on their own. IMHO, that is why Sam's allusion to the JSPA index left out a key point - within hours, the community had enforced oversight and removed that item from the front page (Ted moved it to the 'news' page). Furthermore, a discussion ensued in the appropriate forums as what to do next. Eventually, an 'official' position on the JSPA was reached and posted on the website. The community oversight process worked beautifully.
Yet, a personal web site is just that - personal. It's purposely not part of the ASF community. There's no oversight. Therefore, I question what benefit can be gained by endorsing personal web sites hosted on the ASF infrastructure. -- justin
P.S. There are about 590 people with commit right now!
