Apache defines [1] a Project Management Committee as: "A project management committee (PMC) is a committee of the Apache Software Foundation charged with responsibility for a top level project. The PMC is the vehicle through which decision making power and responsibility for oversight is devolved to developers."
A portion of how provide is oversight is defined by Apache, through its various policies, dealing with things ranging from IP to branding to security. Some portion of oversight is exercised day-to-day by the decisions we make. But I think there is a space for decision making of a form that is more durable than an ad hoc decision. So something that we and others can rely on as being a consistently applied rule, practice or policy. This might be areas that are not explicitly addressed in Apache policy. For example, we might want to require the use of certain coding standards and naming conventions for our code modifications. We might want to mandate a certain request form for someone who wants to request use of our trademarks. And we might want to state a consistent rule for how long we give newly elected committers to process their paperwork. In other organizations where I've volunteered, such durable rules are routinely adopted in the form of "standing rules". A standing rule is typically a written statement that is approved by a super-majority of eligible voters and essentially supplements the policies of the parent organization. A standing rule is scoped to a single committee and may never contradict the parent organization's rules. Does anyone know if there is a similar concept at in Apache projects? It seems like it would be useful to have, and to me it does not seem repugnant to the decision making aspects of the Apache Way. It just acknowledges that in the interest of transparency, fairness and reliability, that broad decisions that impact a contributors long-term work might sometimes benefit from being pre-defined rather than depend on the ad hoc whim of the PPMC at some given future time. Sometimes we all benefit from discretion and flexibility. But other times uncertainty is not our friend. If we want to adopt such a mechanism within the PPMC, I'd suggest the following initial standing rule, which would be adopted according to its own rules, as a bootstrapping exercise. [1] http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html#mailing-list-naming-policy Regards, -Rob =PPMC Standing Rules= 1. Any PPMC member can propose a Standing Rule by sending the text of a Proposed Standing Rule to the project's main list in a thread entitled "[DISCUSS] Foo for a Standing Rule". Such a rule must not contradict any existing Apache policy. 2. After discussion, and possible modification of the Proposed Standing Rule, the proposer shall initiate a vote by starting a thread entitled "[VOTE] Foo for a Standing Rule". The vote shall run for at least 72 hours. 3. Anyone may vote, but only votes by PPMC members are tallied. A Proposed Standing Rule is approved if the number of +1 votes are at least 2/3 of the total number of +1 and -1 votes cast. At least one +1 vote must come from an Project Mentor. 4. Approved Standing Rules become effective immediately, unless other stated in the Standing Rule. Approved Standing Rules shall be published on the project's website. 5. A Standing Rule may be also be modified or revoked using this procedure.
