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Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 14:38:50 +1000
From: David Crossley <crossley@apache.org>
To: dev@forrest.apache.org
Subject: Proposal for Forrest-Cocoon-Lenya commit access
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There have been various discussions about this
topic, some of them on various PMC mailing lists.
There is no need for it to be private, so now it is
in the open. The developer community needs to
understand the background and the related issues.
Private discussions do not enable the community
to be involved.

We all, especially new Forrest committers, need
to understand the ramifications of this.

The main effect that i see is that we would be
opening up the Forrest repository to people that
we do not know and are not familiar with.
Is everyone happy with that.

This proposal is not about making people from
these projects members of the Forrest PMC.
The process of becoming a PMC member is up to
each project. At Forrest, our process is different
to Cocoon's and i don't know about Lenya's.

This proposal is only about convenience. Nothing is
stopping anybody from sending patches to the other
projects.

Here is the proposal. After a chance for discussion
then we can go on to vote about it. Normally we don't
need to vote on things, but we do in cases of changes
in project direction and community composition.

Forrest commit access to Cocoon
-------------------------------
Cocoon PMC has recently asked Forrest PMC if it
would be useful for our committers to have access
to their SVN repository.

Cocoon commit access to Forrest
-------------------------------
Back in July 2003 before Forrest became a top-level
project, we decided [1] to give Cocoon committers
access to the Forrest CVS Repository. That is
something that we need to re-decide, so now seems
a good time. The reason that we need to revisit,
is that the formality for creating Apache Forrest
as a top-level project includes defining our
project guidelines which includes deciding who
gets commit access.

Forrest commit access to Lenya
------------------------------
Lenya have recently decided to give Forrest
committers access to their SVN repository. [2]

Lenya commit access to Forrest 
------------------------------
These projects are trying to collaborate on
better integration. It might make that easier
if Lenya committers had access. 

Related issues
--------------
Just so that the newcomers know, normally the process
of going from developer to committer happens entirely
within each project. You do not get commit access to
other projects (other than xml-commons).

This situation between the Cocoon-based projects
is some new experiment.

As is the norm, the PMC of each project has the
final say over their own codebases and communities.
With the code, they can veto a change and roll back
the SVN.

Even though these committers would have access,
they need to pay attention to the desired direction
of the project. If they don't understand that,
then they should just contribute a patch.

Such access is enabled by "svn authorisation".
For example, here is the current cocoon definition:
[groups]
...
cocoon=stefano,balld,... list of all cocoon committers
...
lenya=andreas,alexmc, ... list of all lenya committers
...
[/cocoon]
@cocoon = rw
@lenya = rw
#-- begin Cocoon GSoC students
[/cocoon/gsoc/mpfingsthorn]
mpfingsthorn = rw
... etc.

See how they restrict access to certain parts
for certain groups.

Forrest currently only has one "group" and that
is all Forrest PMC members. We also have this
new concept of committers that are not PMC members.
We don't have any of those yet. When we do, they
would be a separate group. For example, Lenya
has a "lenya-soc" group for their GSoC people.

This proposal is only about the main groups.

References
----------
[1] past decision about Cocoon access to Forrest
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=105645457400003
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=105738941000001

[2] decision about Forrest access to Lenya
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=112551792600003