Hi, I'd like to write a blog post (on the foundation blog, or might be a good opportunity to start the comdev blog) about the basic rules of Apache projects.
Trying to keep it as short as possible, with links to more info. Feedback/corrections/additions are welcome - I will invite our PMCs and members to this thread to try and get a nice bikeshedding^H^H^H^H^H^H consensus. -Bertrand DRAFT: What are the basic, invariant rules of Apache projects? The below rules and best practices aim to make ASF projects sustainable and open to new community members, and to make sure source code is released in a legally clean way. Projects enter the ASF via the Incubator, anyone can suggest a new project as described on the Incubator website. Each project is led by its elected Project Management Committee (PMC). New committers and PMC members are elected by the PMC based on merit. Committers and PMC members are not necessarily ASF members, they have to be elected separately for that (LINK). Each project has at least one private and one public (development, "dev") mailing list which are the only official communication channels for the PMC members and committers. Discussions and decisions about people (such as the above elections) usually happen on the project's private list, but that's not a hard rule, the PMC can decide. All other decisions happen on the dev list, discussions on the private list are kept to a minimum. "If it didn't happen on the dev list, it didn't happen" - which leads to two sub-rules: a) Elections of committers and PMC members are published on the dev list once finalized. b) Out-of-band discussions (IRC etc.) are summarized on the dev list as soon as they have impact on the project, code or community. All decisions are made by consensus, following the ASF's voting rules (LINK). ASF releases consist of source code, binaries are provided as a convenience only (LINK). Release artifacts are created according to the ASF's release rules (LINK). A formal PMC vote is required to publish a release. Each PMC reports to the board of directors, at least every three months, mentioning progress, problems and perspectives in terms of community, releases, code and compliance with the above rules. Trademarks and logos used by ASF projects belong to the ASF. That being said: have fun at the ASF, and commit early, commit often, and let everything happen in the open. (this is just a draft to kickoff the discussion...)
