This is a great discussion. Info for the newly arrived: currently, the
AOO podling is governed by the Podling Project Management Committee
(PPMC) members - voting on releases, new committers, etc. For the
podling to "graduate" and become a top level project (TLP), the podling
needs to submit a graduation proposal, including a future list of
Project Management Committee (PMC) members, including a Chair of the
PMC, to the Incubator PMC. Once the Incubator PMC votes on it, the
proposal goes to the Board of Directors of the ASF for a final vote to
formally create AOO as a project of the ASF.
https://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html#process
On 9/5/2012 3:19 PM, Jürgen Schmidt wrote:
On 9/5/12 11:32 AM, Ian Lynch wrote:
On 5 September 2012 09:40, Regina Henschel <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all,
some time ago we expressed, that we think the project is ready to graduate.
In the process of graduating, a proposal for a Project Management Committee
(PMC) will be brought to the Apache Board. Although discussion about
individual persons will not be done public, it is important to get a shared
conviction about the criteria for our PMC members.
You find information about project management and the role of the PMC in
http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html
From the Apache governance point of view, I'd recommend these two
pages which also define and describe (in the larger context of a PMC)
the basic duties of PMC members and PMC chairs:
http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html#chair
http://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/pmcs.html
Being a PMC member is about having the ability to directly help govern
the project direction, primarily by voting on releases, and proposing
and voting on new committers or PMC members.
----
Each TLP's PMC (but not not podlings/PPMCs) also has a Chair of the
committee - a single individual who is also appointed as the Vice
President of the project by a board resolution. Conceptually, there are
two kinds of duties the chair needs to perform:
- The first is paperwork: the chair is the person tasked with ensuring
that various ASF organizational paperwork is completed accurately and in
a timely manner: PMC roster changes, new committer activations, and
board reports. In some cases, the chair or a specific designee must
actually do the duties (requesting ACKs, etc.). In other cases - like
writing a board report - the PMC as a whole often helps or does the
work, although it should be the chair that should actually check the
report into the board agenda.
- The second is to serve as the representative of the project to the
board, and vice-versa. This is why PMC chairs are officers of the
corporation: they are directly responsible to the board both to make
accurate reports on what the project is doing to the board (via
quarterly reports), as well as taking feedback from the board back to
the project to consider and act on. Thus, PMC chairs are required to
subscribe to the board@ mailing list (which is only open to Members and
officers).
----
Note that operationally, PMC chairs typically act the same as any other
PMC member: they don't have other special privileges, they only get one
vote, and in general project governance decisions are expected to be
made by the PMC as a whole. From the Apache point of view, the current
employment of a chair is not an issue; however the podling should be
aware that the external *perception* of the selection of the chair for a
project like AOO is something to keep in the back of your mind.
...snip excellent lists of traits of a good PMC member...
I'd urge everyone to read through Jurgen's excellent ideas in the
previous email on this thread. While no-one should assume that being
a PMC member is a full-time job, he does have some really good questions
for people to think about.
... snip Jurgen's excellent ideas...
And the end of this email I want to say that from my point of view
"roles" are not so important. We are all equal here in the project and I
think we all have the same goal. We want make AOO even more successful
and we want a community where it is fun to be part of it and where
anybody can drive things forward by simply doing it aligned with the
overall project rules and guidelines.
Indeed - roles should not be important in how actual project work gets
done the majority of the time. Apache projects rely on many different
people volunteering their time and skills freely to donate code, ideas,
documentation, tests, and all sorts of other things to our projects.
Anyone should feel welcome to propose ideas and send patches to our
code, websites, and policies. So whether someone is on the final PMC
after graduation or not doesn't affect the great majority of things any
volunteer here can do.
- Shane
P.S. Thanks Regina et al for taking this to ooo-dev@!
