On 24.08.2005 08:22:09 Jeremias Maerki wrote: <snip/> > > A discussion on [EMAIL PROTECTED] some weeks ago concerning the voting > > procedure for new committers [1],[2] led me to the conclusion that we > > should discuss and vote new committers on the pmc list. > > > > What do you think? > > I fully agree. <snip/>
I was approached off-line and made aware of a mistake I made with this statement. I'd like to correct myself: I fully agree that prior to a committer vote a discussion should be held inside the PMC to avoid any very negative effects of a premature vote. However, the person who wrote to me quite correctly pointed out that the committers of a subproject who are not on the PMC would effectively lose their voting rights in this area, were the committer vote to be held in the PMC. <pmc-chair-hat enabled="true"> I would like to point out to everyone once again (like I did during the creation of the XML Graphics project) that every committer is welcome to join the PMC. That offer still stands. The board actually encourages most (if not all) committers to be on the PMC of their project. The PMC is not a distinguished body in which people have a special social status or something like that. It's the "Project Management Committee", a group of people tasked with the oversight over a project and tasked with certain other duties around the project to keep it live and healthy and to address any problems in a proactive way. It's the PMC (or in the end actually the PMC chair as an officer of the foundation) who is ultimately responsible for the project. That's also why it is widely believed in member circles that only PMC members have binding votes in a project. Some people will be happy to be simple committers and noone will dispute their rights to help steer a (sub)project in the (technical) direction they see fit. When it comes to hard decisions it will be primarily the PMC's call. In very hard situations it will be the PMC chair's call as it happened when the Avalon project was shut down. To say it once again, the board encourages committers to be on their PMC but there is no requirement. Being on the PMC also means additional responsibilities. It's for people who really care about the project and are willing to invest more time beyond coding to "serve their project". </pmc-chair-hat> So what does this mean for the topic at hand? I think it means that we should still consider holding the committer votes on the public dev list but only after the PMC has decided that it's good idea to hold the vote. Any justified -1 on such a vote by a non-PMC-member will not be overruled as they probably have valid concerns. But in the favor of the project and especially of the person who is voted on such vetoes should be confided to the private PMC list before bringing them to the public. Such vetoes can be very damaging (for whomever) as we have seen in the past. This latter rule is one I personally think is very important so we can allow further public committer votes at all. The vote might look like a pro-forma thing in this light but I think it isn't. This approach at least would address both Noel Bergman's and Ken Coar's opinions on the matter as seen on Christian's [2] link. Comments welcome (in the open)! I'm trying to communicate here what I pick up on members@ and on board@ which is not always that simple, especially when the recommendations run in different directions that what has been done in the past (for example during the "XML" time). If there are concerns with these general procedures/habits/recommendations/views I'd like to encourage you to take them to community@ where a lot of ASF and board members are also listening in and can provide their opinions. Not what our project concerns, but general procedure. I hope you get my meaning. Jeremias Maerki --------------------------------------------------------------------- Apache XML Graphics Project URL: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
