On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 08:52 AM, Stephen McConnell wrote:
As soon as you let a PMC make decisions behind closed doors - then your asking for trouble. A PMC is there to handle either (a) dull, boring, mindless administrata, or (b) nasty stuff that you really don't want to know about. Anything in between should be for the community to decide and if that causes some flack - so be it.
Again, this is incorrect and very misleading. The PMC is *not* where all
the boring stuff gets delegated. The PMC is, however, where all serious
committers end up. If you are in the PMC, you have a say in the direction
of the project. You have a voice in what that project produces, what
sub-projects it spawns, the scope of the project and the mission. It
means you've earned the trust of your project peers and have ultimate
access to that project.
The PMC is not size-constrained. If you are a serious contributor to a project, and
you sustain that seriousness, chances are very high that you will be invited
into the PMC. The typical timeline is 6 months of sustained contributions to
gain commit access, and another 6 months of sustained contributions (especially
contributions that tend to help drive the project) to become a part of the PMC.
The only administrative part of the PMC is voting on new committers and new PMC members.
Also, the ASF security mailing lists are restricted to PMCers (only in rare cases
will a non-PMCer be invited to join).
-aaron
