A few observations I have found by looking through the Apache wiki for all the projects is: That several of them do separate the two roles. The discussions about committers happens in the dev@ list while discussions for PMC happen on the private@ list. Some projects projects treat PMC as a promotion role for someone that has been successful at the committer role, but with no clear definition of success or timeline.
Maybe a starting point we just set some arbitrary period of time, say 6 months, after becoming a committer where someone on the PMC can nominate a committer for a promotion to the PMC. If within this time the committer as continued to show increasing merit then the PMC’s should vote positively. Then we are just left with coming up with clear metrics for measuring merit as a contributor to become a committer. I think the The Apache Way Merit definition is pretty clear in its distinction of what is and isn’t considered merit. The key things I see is that employment is not considered in the merit, nor is future or vapor works. Merit must only be ranted for things that have been completed and measured by its impact. Personally, I think we need to look at more than just code contributions. We also need to look at process and community. By process I think they should be able to submit a PR, respond to feedback on the submission, and see the PR through to merge. They should also be commenting and providing clear actionable feedback on other’s PRs. For community I think they need to be actively participating in user@ and dev@ discussions. Additionally I feel that in all these forums they need to adhere to our code of conduct, which we should also attempt to solidify. The bottom line is that if we accept this person as a committer what will they bring to the community beyond their ability to produce some code. Perhaps then the PMC role is more about amplifying those that excel at these things and mentors others in them. Apache Felix has a pretty good page we could use as a starting point for outlining our process. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FELIX/Apache+Felix+Community+Roles+and+Processes <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FELIX/Apache+Felix+Community+Roles+and+Processes> > On May 29, 2019, at 10:13 AM, Anthony Baker <aba...@pivotal.io> wrote: > > I think it’s time to re-establish consensus around two things: > > 1) What is our criteria for becoming a committer and PMC member? > 2) Do we have separate criteria for committers and PMC members (and thus > should elect them separately)? > > The ASF notes that projects are free to chose the approach that works best > for them [1]: > >> PMCs are free to set the bar for merit within their projects, as long as >> decision making is done in a collaborative fashion as in the Apache Way. >> Healthy PMCs will regularly review contributions from non-committers - both >> specific code patches, bugs reported or commented on, or just helpful >> interaction on their project lists - to evaluate contributors as potential >> committers. Ensuring that PMC members are helping to mentor helpful new >> contributors to their projects helps to ensure a healthy and growing project >> community. >> >> PMCs vary significantly in the level of commitment and work expected to be >> considered for a committership. Some PMCs vote in new PMC members typically >> from their existing committers (i.e. the progression is contributor -> vote >> -> committer -> vote -> PMC), while other PMCs always elect new committers >> into the PMC simultaneously (contributor -> vote -> committer & PMC member). > > To date, we’ve been mostly following the “bundling” approach of combining > committers / PMC’s votes. This is not explicitly spelled out in our wiki > however (see [2][3]). We established the current criteria back in 2016 [4]. > The private@ thread [5] that spawned this discussion included some great > advice from our project mentors (Roman, Kos, Niall, William Rowe). If I can > summarize it here, it basically boils down to: > > - Set the bar for inclusion as low as possible > - Read the definition of Merit [5] > - Is the person trustworthy with code, community, etc. > > Thoughts? > > > Anthony > > > [1] https://apache.org/foundation/governance/pmcs.html > [2] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/GEODE/Becoming+a+committer > [3] > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/GEODE/Nominating+a+Committer+and+PMC+Member > [4] > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/819a140349394833cf1c51b653672ab7a950d48891cf6abef245b8a7@1452130249@%3Cdev.geode.apache.org%3E > [5] http://theapacheway.com/merit/ > >
