Apache Ant - Apache Ant Project Bylaws

The Project Management Committee (PMC) for Apache Ant was created by a resolution of the board of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF)on 18th Novembr 2002. The PMC is responsible to the board and the ASF for the management and oversight of the Apache Ant codebase. The responsibilites of the PMC include

Deciding what is distributed as products of the Apache Ant project. In particular all releases must be approved by the PMC
Maintaining the project's shared resources, including the codebase respository, mailing lists, websites.
Speaking on behalf of the project.
Resolving license disputes regarding products of the project
Nominating new PMC members and committers
Maintaining these bylaws and other guidelines of the project

Membership of the PMC is by invitation only and must be approved by a consensus of active PMC members. A PMC member is considered inactive by their own declaration of by not contributing in any form to the project for over six months. An inactive member can become active again by reversing whichever condition made them inactive (i.e., by reversing their earlier declaration or by once again contributing toward the project's work). Membership can be revoked by a unanimous vote of all the active PMC members other than the member in question.

The chair of the PMC is appointed by the ASF board. The chair is an office holder of the Apache Software Foundation (Vice President, Apache Ant) and has primary responsibility to the board for the management of the projects within the scope of the Ant PMC. The chair reports to the board quarterly on developments within the Ant project. The PMC may consider the position of PMC chair annually and if supported by 3/4 Majority may recommend a new chair to the board. Ultimately, however, it is the board's responsibility who to appoint as the PMC chair.

The project's Committers are responsible for the project's technical management. All committers have write access to the project's source repository. Committers may cast binding votes on any technical discussion regarding the project.

Membership as a Committer is by invitation only and must be approved by consensus of the active PMC members. A Committer is considered inactive by their own declaration or by not contributing in any form to the project for over six months. An inactive committer can become active again by reversing whichever condition made them inactive (i.e., by reversing their earlier declaration or by once again contributing toward the project's work). Commit access can be revoked by a unanimous vote of all the active PMC members (except the member in question if they are a PMC member).

All Apache committers are required to have a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file with the Apache Software Foundation.

A committer who makes a sustained contibution to the project will usually be invited to become a member of the PMC.

All of the volunteers who are contributing time, code, documentation, or resources to the Ant Project. A developer that makes sustained, welcome contributions to the project for over six months is usually invited to become a Committer, though the exact timing of such invitations depends on many factors.

The most important participants in the project are people who use our software. The majority of our developers start out as users and guide their development efforts from the user's perspective.

Users contribute to the Apache projects by providing feedback to developers in the the form of bug reports and feature suggestions. As well, users participate in the Apache community by helping other users on mailing lists and user support forums.