Hello, I'm new here, and I'll only be around for a little while, but I hope it will be a pleasant visit.
I make my living writing open source search engine software which lives at the ASF -- Apache Lucy, an incubating project. I was recently invited to join the Incubator PMC and accepted, but beyond that and my position on the Apache Lucy PPMC (Podling Project Management Committee), I don't have any special authority within the ASF. I have too many ongoing obligations to participate in OO.o, and have no stake in the project. I'm here as an individual volunteer to help everybody out by picking the low-hanging fruit and responding to easy questions about the ASF and the Incubator. Don't take me for an ASF rep -- I'm just some dude on a mailing list offering unverified info and links. Michael Meeks wrote: > + if we wait, do we risk getting locked out ? No. Merit will always be recognized and new committers accepted. > + after the incubation proposal is accepted is > it possible to become a committer ? Becoming a new committer prior to the acceptance of an Incubator podling merely requires adding your name on the wiki proposal page (in this case, <http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal>). Typically people will also introduce themselves on the [email protected] list in the proposal discussion thread and get a "Welcome aboard!" reply from the proposal's Champion or somebody else, but the formal requirement is being listed in the proposal when the Incubator PMC votes on it. After the podling gets going, you have to demonstrate merit and pass a vote held by the PPMC, which is then ratified by a lazy consensus vote of the Incubator PMC. After a podling graduates and becomes a top-level Apache project, becoming a committer requires a vote by the project's PMC. So there is, in fact, some benefit to signing up now because the bureaucratic hurdles are lower. However, most podlings are eager to increase the diversity of their committer ranks and the amount of merit you have to demonstrate before being invited in is pretty low. I would expect an OO.o podling to be even more welcoming than most. > + will people with relevant experience, contribution and > merit find it possible to become committers later ? Absolutely. You also don't need to worry about IBM or anybody else dominating the PMC and calling the shots. If there was ever an attempt to deny someone with merit committership for political reasons, someone within the project would raise the issue with the Board, and there would be hell to pay. The Board answers to the Members, of which there are 300-400, all participating as individuals with a strong investment in preserving the ASF's vendor-neutral stance. http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#hats Individuals compose the ASF All of the ASF including the board, the other officers, the committers, and the members, are participating as individuals. That is one strength of the ASF, affiliations do not cloud the personal contributions. Unless they specifically state otherwise, whatever they post on any mailing list is done as themselves. It is the individual point-of-view, wearing their personal hat and not as a mouthpiece for whatever company happens to be signing their paychecks right now, and not even as a director of the ASF. All of those ASF people implicitly have multiple hats, especially the Board, the other officers, and the PMC chairs. They sometimes need to talk about a matter of policy, so to avoid appearing to be expressing a personal opinion, they will state that they are talking in their special capacity. However, most of the time this is not necessary, personal opinions work well. Hope this helps, Marvin Humphrey -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
