Here are a number of FAQ's about how the Apache OpenOffice project governance works.
Contents
The Project Management Committee (PMC) is the government of the project. The committee
is responsible for the project and decides what to do and which direction to go.
(see here for a list of PMC members)
Although Apache projects have few formal roles, there are some technical subsystems which have admin or similar roles filled by project volunteers. If you have a question with one of these systems, these are the people you might want to contact first, before escalating to Apache Infrastructure.
Each mailing list has one or more moderators. See the Mailing List page for how to contact a moderator. Responsibilities of mailing list moderators include:
All committers have equal access. If you need to do something beyond ordinary commit rights, such as importing a dump file, enter a JIRA issue with Apache Infra.
Registered users on any of these services generally have equal access. Contact the admins for these services using the links provided for the service.
Blog authors: You must be a committer. To establish a Roller account contact Infrastructure.
| ID | Author # |
|---|---|
| sk | Sally Khudairi |
| pescetti | Andrea Pescetti |
| petko | Peter Kovacs |
| cmarcum | Carl Marcum |
Blog admins: Admins authorize new authors once they have first established a Roller account. This requires a new login and registration. Then an Admin can grant them author permissions.
| ID | Admin # |
|---|---|
| wave | Dave Fisher |
| marcus | Marcus Lange |
Admins: Marcus Lange, Rob Weir, Herbert Duerr.
Admins: Matthias Seidel, Peter Kovacs, Kay Schenk
Admins: Peter Kovacs, Shane Curcuru, Don Harbison, Samer Mansour, Juergen Schmidt, Rob Weir, (Apache id) imacat
Admin: Matthias Seidel
Admin: Jim Jagielski
First of all you have to think how you want to participate as we have different kind of roles like user, developer, committer. The easiest way is to use what we build as user. If you want to improve parts of the software, or documentation, write to our mailing lists what should be modified and how it should be done. On the community wiki you can just create an account and start to work on it right away. There is a Help Wanted page that has ideas for getting started.
The following are conditions to become a committer:
If 1 of the 4 statements above are true, then you can be voted in as committer.
When the vote result is positive, you will be asked for some information to setup your committer status. Read the Participation guide for more information.
The following is a brief summary of what to expect as committer:
After your (individual Contributor License Agreement (iCLA) has been received and registered, you will be invited to specify one or more preferred Apache user names.
Important:
The e-mail address you provide in your iCLA will be used for the following
communications with you.
Please note that there is also a Corporate Contributor License Agreement (CCLA) if you want/have to commit in the name of a company or organization.
Choose one or more user name(s) that would be acceptable to you. These are short names or abbreviation that will be used for a Unix account login.
Example:
Your name is "John Doe", so an ID could be "johnd" or "jdoe". Here you can see
if the ID is still free or already given to another committer.
Supply all other information that is requested. Return the ID requests as instructed.
When your choices are returned, the first request that does not conflict with an already-issued ID will be used to generate an Apache ID. Write them in the order you would like to have, so the first one is the most wanted.
You will receive an e-mail, from "root@apache.org", that confirms the Apache user name for you and also provides you with an initial password. There are also instructions for changing your password. Please be patient as this mail can take some days.
The ID will also be your Apache e-mail address. Note that the account will be set up to forward all received mails to the e-mail address you supplied on your iCLA. It is not a normal mail account but just for forwarding. After you have the account there is also a way to associate your Apache e-mail address with additional e-mail addresses that you have. (ToDo: Add a link to a how-to)
The ID and password will allow you to check in changes and new additions on the Apache SVN repository for the Apache OpenOffice repository. The ability to check in material on the SVN repository is important for more than code. All committers will have an use for it.
The ID and password will allow you to login to a personal Unix account on the Apache server "people.apache.org". You can produce a personal website at this account as well as use it as a regular Unix (specifically, FreeBSD) account. You do not need to be able to use this account. You may find it useful as you become more accomplished as a committer.
Being a committer also grants access to some non-public resources and mailing lists. There are details in the private committers SVN tree.
See the Guide for new committers and the Committers' FAQ for more information.
Voting is done when a formal decision has to be made or due to legal reasons, e.g.,
to vote in new members as committers. In any case avoid voting as the normal way is
to come to a decision by discussions. The initiator is responsible for the vote,
that means also to count the votes and present the result. Every member has 1 vote.
(see here for more information)