While a little tweaking about contributions and contributors might help, the common use of those terms tends to be sufficient. The User hat is also a casual description. There are no bright lines.
Note that "Contributor" and "Contribution" as narrow terms of art are called out by explicit definition when needed, as at <http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt>. I think the mistake is defining "User" as an Apache Hat. You can talk about "them" all you want, but it does not appear to be an useful designation other than for those who self-proclaim themselves to be users (as is certainly their right). Even "user" reports of misadventures and difficulties are contributions and those can be quite valuable. I see no reason for Apache to consider that a distinguishable hat, especially with implications of some sort of rank. Thinking hierarchically, an user is anyone who engages with the project. We don't know Jack about the ones that don't, not even from download counts. Identifiable engagement is a contribution, however fleeting. It would work for me to see there be contributors and then how some contributors also have committer (and other roles) at the ASF and ASF projects. I'm a committer. I am not wearing my committer hat in writing and posting this message. It doesn't seem to me that I am wearing an user hat either. I trust that it is a contribution, nonetheless. What hats are others wearing at the time of their participation on this thread? -- Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org +1-206-779-9430 https://keybase.io/orcmid PGP F96E 89FF D456 628A X.509 used and required for signed e-mail PS: Since it is rare, in practice, for me to make a direct commit to any project, my being a committer works out to be more about the orcmid @a.o identifier, the fact that I have a CLA on file, and that I have access to some mailing lists and resources (including a ~orcmid computer account) that are provided to committers. -----Original Message----- From: Pierre Smits [mailto:pierre.sm...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2014 05:45 To: dev@community.apache.org Subject: Re: Proposing for Apache Member? The hat 'User' states that the following: They contribute to the Apache projects by providing feedback to developers in the form of bug reports and feature suggestions The hat 'Developer' states that the following: a user who contributes... In general, a user only consumes the work (the software, the documentation, the postings on the mailing list). They aren't active as contributors (in any way, within the community of a project). As soon as a user gets involved in a project (participating in discussions in the mailing list, posting JIRA issues, etc) he becomes a contributor to the project and its work. This person might be a developer or not, a documentalist or not, etc. Having the 'contribute' in both descriptions makes it ambiguous. Removing the aspect of contributing from the hat 'User' partly removes that ambiguity. Renaming the hat 'Developer' to 'Contributor', does the other part. Subsequently, the hat 'Committer' could be redefined with following: A *committer *is a contributor, that was given write access... Regards, Pierre Smits *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* Services & Solutions for Cloud- Based Manufacturing, Professional Services and Retail & Trade http://www.orrtiz.com On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Eric Covener <cove...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > How can it be that 'Contributor' is not an official 'hat'-definition in > the > > (explanatory) pages of the ASF? While so much importance is placed on > > correct usage of terminology in projects and elsewhere, based on those > > pages. > > > > Shouldn't the document > > http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles be amended > (with > > respect to definitons 'User' and 'Developer) in such a way that it > reflects > > that? > > I don't think a generic "Contributor" adds much to that document. What > confusion about the term contributors would the hypothetical update > clarify? >
