Our new IP Policy has established the
role of Committers. Committers are Contributors who have the authority
to approve Projects being placed into the Catalogs.
We have based our Committer selection
process somewhat on the process used in Eclipse, where the Committers are
elected to that position through a vote of the existing Committers. Like
Eclipse, Committers are those whose technical capabilities and project
participation have gained them respect in the community.
Today, we have seven Committers, six
of whom manage the code in the Apache Catalog, but only one who manages
code in the GPL catalog. So, we are calling for people to volunteer
to be nominated and elected as GPL Committers.
So, what does a Committer do? When
someone wants to submit a Project to a Catalog, the IP Manager (that's
me) scans the code for IP issues. Once those issues have been cleared
up (which may require some changes to the submission), the Committer goes
to work. The Committer makes sure that the submission runs, does
what it is supposed to do, and is properly documented. A Committer
may raise an objection if, for example, the submission does not include
all the source, or requires a key from a third party to execute. Basically
the Committer helps to ensure that the OpenNTF Catalog contains only high
quality Projects.
We currently have seven GPL submissions
in the pipeline – which will be ready for a Committer's consideration
once the IP issues have been cleared. If you are ready willing and
able to lend a hand to help with these, and strengthen the GPL Catalog
side of OpenNTF – please send me an email to IP-Manager at openntf dot
org.
Peter Tanner
IP Manager