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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 09:29:44 -0400
To: geronimo-dev@incubator.apache.org
From: Shane Curcuru <shane_curcuru@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: committer process
Cc: members@apache.org
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(Apologies if this has already been covered... I haven't been watching 
incubator myself - I'm presuming someone will moderate me in!)

One side comment: I think we're all very passionate about some very similar 
things.  And perhaps we need to clarify what we think 'responsible' means 
in this context.

I *think* that Greg was trying to point out that it is the PMC that is 
legally responsible to the corporation that is the ASF to ensure that the 
project that they manage is run responsibly.  While it's easy to forget, 
there are plenty of legal and organizational issues that we must continue 
to dot the i's and cross the t's on, even if they have little to do with 
the great code and communities that we have.

While I'm sure our committers also feel responsible for our code - and do 
the technical work, and answer questions on the list, and everything else 
they do - they are not strictly part of the corporate organization that 
holds the ASF together.  No-one is forgetting the technical and community 
participation that our committers give.  But in some ways the buck stops 
with the PMC when it comes to decisions that can affect the larger picture, 
the picture that includes the Federation itself.

(Someone chime in if I'm making sense yet)

Personally, I'm still undecided as to open vs closed new committer 
voting.   In terms of who votes - PMC or the project's committer base - I 
think each community should decide for itself.  However, remember that all 
new committers effectively have to be (or should have to be) approved by 
the PMC before they can get an account - this is one way the PMC 
establishes the organizational oversight that can keep the ASF running (as 
a corporation).

- Shane

>---- From: N. Alex Rupp <rupp0035@umn.edu> ----
>
> > Greg Wrote:
> > By moving the vote explicitly onto the PMC's private
> > mailing list, you are putting the vote in front of the
> > people who are ultimately responsible.
>...
>I'm curious how the members of the PMC can be more "responsible" than the
>people who *also* invest their free time each day to write the software,
>foster the community and contribute to the list, the wiki and incoming
>members?  If they were "more responsible" than us, everything on this list
>would be in front of them every day anyway, so there'd be no reason to "put
>the vote in front" of them.  Perhaps the PMC isn't more "responsible" so
>much as more "accountable", which begs the question "to whom?"
>
>To the board?  To the public? Or to the people on this list who stand to
>lose or gain the most as its developers and future users?