Project Management Committee Guide

This document is targeted at Apache PMC members. A PMC is responsible to the board for the proper management of an Apache project.

If you are a committer who is not yet a PMCer then you will probably find that the committers guide is more useful.

If you are not yet a committer but are interested in joining Apache then please start here.

• Project Management Committee Guide
  • Intended Audience
  • Contents
• Policy
  • On Mailing Lists
• PMC FAQ
  • What Is A PMC?
  • We've voted a new committer in. Now what?
  • We want to grant karma to someone who already has an account.
  • We need access to a machine other than people.apache.org.
  • We've voted in a new PMC member. Now what?
  • What are the duties of the PMC chair and how to perform them?
  • How Do We Import Code From An External Source?
  • How Do I Search The Archives For Private Lists?
  • How Do We Request A Wiki?
  • How Do We Request A New Mailing List?
  • Where Should Project Business Be Discussed?

All Project Management Committees SHALL restrict their communication on private mailing lists to issues that cannot be discussed in public such as:

• Discussion of
  • pre-disclosure security problems
  • pre-agreement discussions with third parties that require confidentiality
  • nominees for project, project committee or Foundation membership
  • personal conflicts among project personnel

All projects SHALL use the name private@project.apache.org for this private list (where project is the name of the project).

A project management committee (PMC) is a committee of the Apache Software Foundation charged with responsibility for a top level project. The PMC is the vehicle through which decision making power and responsibility for oversight is devolved to developers.

It is the responsibility of each project PMC to guide their new committers, ensure that they have access to the proper resources, advise them about relevant ASF documentation (e.g. the Guide for new committers or the Committers' FAQ) and generally ease their way.

You need to first ensure that the new committer fills out the appropriate forms (including the CLA). An account will not be processed without the CLA acknowledged by the ASF secretary or a board member. Your PMC needs to work with the new committer to ensure that their CLA is received and recorded properly, so you need to monitor the file iclas.txt in the foundation/officers repository. Only ASF members and ASF officers (e.g. PMC chairs) have access. The page Apache Committers has a section at the bottom called "Unlisted CLAs". This page is generated daily from the iclas.txt file, so the recently received CLAs will appear there.

The project PMC needs to send an email to root at apache.org requesting a new account to be created (use separate email for each new committer). Ensure that the relevant PMCs are also copied. To expedite the process, please use the following form, after the CLA has been recorded:

To: root
Cc: private@<project>.apache.org, newcommitters@email.address
Subject: Account request - <project>

Preferred userid: ... [please provide acceptable alternatives]
Full name:                ... [as recorded on the CLA]
Forwarding email address: ... [as recorded on the CLA]

Requested UNIX groups: [this enables project website update]

[Vote:          reference to mail archive for PMC bookkeeping]

For elections held on public lists, please supply the mail-archives.apache.org url. For private lists, the message id will suffice (see how to search).

Failure to provide the necessary information and to ensure that a CLA is already on file will result in delays in account creation!

Please be sure to use the same e-mail address that the new commiter had provided on the CLA. Since account requests must not be submitted prior to the PMC verifying that the CLA has been recorded, this should not be a problem.

If you are not a member of the responsible PMC and send in an account request, you will be dealt with accordingly. We will only honor requests from recognized PMC members with a CC to the PMC as well. (We know who you are.)

If you are acting on behalf of a project which was accepted for incubation, please get in touch with the sponsoring PMC and let them take care of requesting any new accounts.

Once the request has been received, a person with root access will create the account and assign the appropriate group permissions. This does usually take some time (i.e. volunteer staffing). A message confirming the new account will be sent to the PMC mailing list.

After that, the PMC takes over and provides the rest of the infrastructure needs. In particular, the PMC chair has the ability to provide write access to the project's source repository. Add an entry to your project group in the file: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/infrastructure/trunk/subversion/authorization/asf-authorization (If they are a new committer, then also add them to the global "committers-[a-z]" group.)

In this case, please contact your PMC first. All PMC chairs can add SVN access for already existing accounts. See notes above. Also remember to request root@ to add them to the UNIX group for your project.

If your PMC chair is not responsive or unavailable, you may send email to infrastructure at apache.org. This should only be for people who already have a people.apache.org account and need extended commit access.

Karma request form:

To: infrastructure
Cc: private@<project>.apache.org, committers@email.address
Subject: Karma request

Userid:           ...

Requested karma:  <project>[/<subproject>] ...
Reason:           [a few lines explaining why someone needs karma]

[Vote:            reference to mail archive for PMC bookkeeping]

Once the request has been received, a person with appropriate access will extend the karma and reply accordingly.

By default, new accounts are only created on people.apache.org. Access to other ASF machines are on demand. In order to request an account, please send your request to infrastructure at apache.org.

Account request form (other machines than people.apache.org):

To: infrastructure
Cc: private@<project>.apache.org, committers@email.address
Subject: Machine account request - <machine>

Userid:          ...
Machine:         ...
Groups required: ...
Reason:          [a few lines explaining why an account is required]

[Vote:           reference to mail archive for PMC bookkeeping]

The administrator of the machine will then reply accordingly.

According to the current rules, election of a new PMC member requires notification of the board by the PMC chair. Just send a simple email asking for acknowledgement of additions or removals (provide the committer ID and name). One board member will acknowlewdge, then a waiting period starts (72 hours). After this has elapsed and no board member objects, your PMC chair needs to update https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/board/committee-info.txt to denote the new PMC member's details and the effective join date. The person can now subscribe to your project PMC mailing list in the normal way.

The duration of the waiting period is very important, not only in this context but also at a project level. People are in various timezones and have busy schedules. As with normal email, we need to provide time for people to respond. The ASF experience has shown that at least 72 hours is needed. We also need to follow defined procedures so that the ASF can operate according to its corporation status. The procedures and these FAQs should make it easy for everyone to operate efficiently.

See the definition of PMC and chair, and be familiar with the ASF Bylaws and their effect on your project and the position that you hold.

Maintain info about your PMC composition in the SVN "committers" repository at /board/committee-info.txt and keep it up-to-date.

Quarterly report to Board. The schedule is listed in committee-info.txt along with the procedure. If there are issues requiring board assistance, then make that apparent, separate from any general project news. The report is mainly about the status of the project, together with any community and legal issues or other general impediments. You can seek input from your PMC, but it is mainly your report to the board. The chair does not report to the PMC. The chair reports to the board (i.e. ultimately to the ASF membership). Look at Board Meetings and Calendar for examples of past PMC reports and when the next meetings are due.

Monitor the minutes of board meetings and pass relevant information back to the project PMC.

PMC chairs should be subscribed to the board@ and infrastructure@ mailing lists.

Be aware of anything currently in incubation at incubator.apache.org.

Remember that, as in any meeting, the chair is a facilitator and their role is to ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard and to enable meetings to flow smoothly. There is no concept of "leader" in the Apache way.

After the project has elected new committers and followed the process to get their account created, the PMC chair has the ability to provide write access to the project's source repository (see svn:infrastructure/trunk/subversion/authorization). Other PMC members might also have this ability. There is a post-commit hook that puts the changes into production immediately.

Adding a new PMC member. After a successful vote from your PMC, send an email to the board (Cc your PMC) asking for acknowledgement, wait 72 hours, then add to committee-info.txt as described above.

If the chair is being changed, then at some stage your PMC needs to send the board an official resolution for the board to approve (or reject) before this change can officially take place. There are lots of examples in past board minutes.

Change VP/chair name at the foundation website. See editing tips for the top-level websites.

See FAQ Why are PMC Chairs officers of the corporation?

See also the documents at Apache Incubator and Apache Jakarta Wiki: RoleOfChair

Any code which which is not created for Apache needs to be passed through the incubator. The incubator team understand Apache policy and legal requirements. They need to ensure that all the correct procedures have been followed and record the appropriate documents.

For more information read this document and post questions to the incubator general list.

There are a number of Apache lists whose archives are not available to the public. Posts to these lists are considered confidential and must not be quoted on public lists without the permission of the author.

PMC members may need to search the archives of their pmc list. ASF members and officers may also need to read various pmc mailing list archives. The archives are found in /home/apmail/private-arch on people.apache.org (note: only accessible by ASF members and officers). There are many ways to search them but grep is easy and simple. PMC members who are not also ASF members can fetch archives in the normal way: via the -get administrative command to ezmlm.

See this.

See this.

Read the policy.

Each PMC has a private mailing list for the discussion of confidential or socially sensitive topics. As much project business as possible should be conducted on public mailing lists. Any topic which does not clearly need to be private should be discussed on an appropriate public mailing list. This allows the public to read about the direction of the project and to offer early feedback.

Some projects use the main development list for discussing these matters. Others have a dedicated list (traditionally general) for the discussion of pmc and project-wide topics which do not need to be confidential.