Good questions all. Too bad this wasn't a week ago; then we could have
gone over it in person with anyone who made it to ApacheCon... 8-)
From a day-to-day perspective, if you're a committer who just wants to
develop on an existing project, or any user who just wants to run Apache
software, who the Members (of the Foundation) are and what they do doesn't
have much applicability. I'd bet the majority of people who contribute
patches, participate on mailing lists, and what-not never give more than 2
or 3 brief thoughts to the organizations behind the scenes. Which is all
fine, and IMO one of the great things about our license: use our software
as you will, change it, sell it or give it away, just give us (the ASF)
credit somewhere.
Sorry if I'm long-winded, I'm still tired from last week. And if you find
this stuff boring, then feel free to stop reading; it probably doesn't
matter to you. However (in my mind) having a strong interest in all this
other organizational 'stuff' is a clear prerequisite for being a
prospective Member.
<I-am-not-a-lawyer-section>
What is the Foundation? See apache.org/foundation/; formally, it is the
"Apache Software Foundation", and it's a "membership-based, not-for-profit
corporation" registered in the USA. This corporation - the entity itself -
is the legal hook that everything else hangs off of.
The corporation can enter into business contracts just like any other
business. Being a 501(c)(3) non-profit both carries certain restrictions
as to how and what kinds of business we can do, as well as allowing
US-based entities to take tax write-offs on donations they make to the
corporation. (Sorry, I have no clue as to how this affects non-US folks
vis-a-vis donation taxability!)
The corporation is also the owner of all of our IP (intellectual
property). The corporation is the entity named at the top of our LICENSE,
and therefore is the copyright owner of all of our code, documentation,
etc.: anything that goes into the software we release.
So since the corporation actually owns all the code we produce, who
controls the corporation? The Members are the shareholders of the
corporation, and thus are the folks who legally set the strategic direction
for the corporation as a whole. The Members have the power (see the
bylaws) to: elect the Board of Directors; elect new Members; remove
existing Members; amend the bylaws. So realistically, the Members have
little direct power; it's really the Board that they elect that has the
'power'.
So who can be on the Board? Virtually anyone could be a Board candidate;
they do not need to be a Member or anything else. (I'm not sure exactly
how you get nominated to be a board candidate?) What does the Board
do? They run the corporation, just like any other board of directors does
with any other large corporation. In general, they only set strategic
direction, and approve legal paperwork, and delegate most of the work to
the Officers of the Corporation or the PMC's or to various committees that
either the Board or President form (like infrastructure, fund-raising, etc.).
Who are the Officers of the Corporation? Some of them are appointed by the
Board, like Chairman, President, Secretary, etc. The President is the CEO
of the Corporation, and is responsible for running aspects of the
Corporation that aren't handled by any of the PMC's. Likewise for Vice
President, Treasurer, etc. Think of any other large corporation: officers
here do the same kinds of things that officers in any corporation
do. Officers and Board members are (I think) the only people implicitly
authorized to speak on behalf of the Corporation, although they typically
only do so when necessary.
The Board also appoints a Vice President of the Corporation to serve as the
head of each Project Management Committee. Anyone can be appointed as an
Officer of the Corporation like this, presuming that the Board believes
they have the right qualities to be an officer. Note that other members of
the PMC are *not* necessarily officers.
The V.P. of each project and their PMC are then responsible to the Board
(and thus to the Corporation, and thus to the Members) to ensure that their
project is managed appropriately. Essentially, all of this structure is
just ensuring that we can show active oversight of the workings of each
project.
Why do we need oversight? Because it's required to be a corporation. Yes,
it really is, and no, we cannot cheat on this one. Does oversight include
writing code, or discussing design strategies? No, not usually! It's
mostly making sure that our projects are following the proper guidelines,
voting on releases or code changes properly, and doing the paperwork to
ensure that the Board gets quarterly reports on the status of all projects.
You say: but, hey: how can we have Officers who are not
Members? Easy! It's very similar to any other large public
corporation. Except instead of shares of stock in the corporation that can
be traded (and hence the votes behind those shares traded), the ASF is a
membership corporation. That means each individual member gets one vote,
which is not transferable (as far as I can tell). But being a stockholder
in a corporation has nothing directly to do with working for - or being an
officer of - the corporation in question. Except at the ASF, Officers
typically don't get paid. 8-)
</I-am-not-a-lawyer-section>
What makes up a good member? Partly, it's someone who has clearly shown
over a period of time to have the best interests of the ASF as a whole in
their heart. It's someone who doesn't just think about the particular code
in their project(s), or who's using their project(s), or how their
consulting business or employer can make use of existing ASF
projects. It's someone who does think about where the ASF fits into the
bigger picture: how can we change the world for the better thru
community-driven software.
This is also partly a personal scale for each existing Member to
decide. IMO, a potential member might be someone who's actually read thru
this whole email and has some interesting questions about the bigger
organizational points here. 8-)
- Shane
And for the curious:
xml-commons committer
xml-xalan committer
XML PMC member
ASF member
Conference Planning PMC member (yes, this is a PMC)
Fund-raising committee
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