Hi All, David, many thanks for your clear explanation of the PMC and its role in the OpenEJB project - I wasn't sure (I guess some others might not have been either) what the PMCs role was or what the responsibilities were of being a member, its much clearer now.
I would be very happy to be on the PMC and give it the time that is required, and would do it to the best of my ability. I do feel that there is a lot for me to learn about the legal side of things at Apache. The current state of the 1.0.0.alpha plugin I posted up represents my current understanding of what's required for a release (Thanks for the note about needing some extra LICENSE/NOTICE files I need inside the plugin jars, btw, I'll reply and sort that out shortly) - if people feel that the plugin meets or is close to meeting the necessary then I'm quite happy to join the PMC, if I'm along way off, then maybe its best to delay it slightly until I'm more knowledgeable. Cheers Jon On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:52 AM, David Blevins <[email protected]>wrote: > Since Jon has the most awareness of the eclipse plugin and is going to be > doing a release, both of which are very much acting in a legal sense, I > think we should add him to the PMC. > > --- pmc info as it relates to openejb --- > > We don't focus on the PMC in this project so many may not have a clear > concept of it. Every project at Apache has a PMC which at minimum > represents Apache from a legal perspective. The people on it are expected > to provide legal oversight, making sure that the legal entity that is Apache > has awareness enough to legally protect the code that leaves it's doors, the > users that use it, and the people who create it. This means making sure any > contributions going into the project are clean and can be legally projected > and making sure any binaries going out meet the legal requirements so they > as well can be legally protected. It's a lot of watching all commits, > keeping an eye on doc contributions, ensuring CLAs are on file for anything > of substantial size, screening release binaries and source for headers, > license files, making sure any binaries being widely distributed have been > voted on, etc., etc. If you are on the PMC and you vote on a release it > means *you* have done all these things to the best of your ability. If you > have not, you either should not be on the PMC or should not vote +1. > > Being on the PMC is a service, not an achievement. Therefore if someone is > added to the PMC you should not say "congratulations", but simply "thank > you." It does not mean anything more than they have the time to help us > function legally. If someone is perpetually too busy to provide legal > oversight and steps down or goes emeritus, it does not mean they are > leaving, just that they are too busy for the extra legal responsibility. > > Some projects go beyond that and use the PMC as the decision makers and > leaders of the project. We do not. We make all our decisions here. We > don't even focus on who is a committer and who is not, which I think is a > major factor of our family-like community and general "everyone is welcome > and matters" spirit. If someone doesn't feel like their input matters till > they are a committer, or any other status, we've done something wrong. > Fortunately, this is one of our strongest attributes and part of the magic > that is this community. > > That's the 10,000 foot view. > > ------------------------------------------ > > Back to the subject at hand. I don't think we have enough legal oversight > for the eclipse plugin. Jon is the obvious remedy for that. > > Jon, any questions and do you think you have time to help provide the extra > oversight? I don't think anything goes into the eclipse plugin that you > haven't seen and you're now learning all the ins and outs of a legally solid > release, so you're more or less doing what is required already. If you are, > I'll put up a vote for adding you. If not, we might want to hold the > release; there's no rush. > > > -David > >
