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The addition of committers is essential to the long-term sustainability of an open source project. The PMC is responsible for determining who will be added as a committer.

Please see the formal policy and process documentation for adding committers. This page discusses best practices in how to think about new committers.

In addition to the mechanisms for adding committers, give some thought to practical steps you can take to attract new contributors.

Who should be a committer?

Each project must decide what is the correct measure for inviting a new committer to their project. There are, however, several things that we encourage you to consider.

Any PMC member can (and should!) nominate project contributors for a committer vote. Don’t assume that the PMC chair, or some senior project member, will do this. Watch the contributors, and nominate promising participants.

Remember that we do all of our development in revision control. Errors are reversible learning opportunities. Thus, inviting someone “too early” has very little risk associated with it. On the other hand, inviting someone too late has the very real risk that they’ll get frustrated and leave, and you’ll have missed that opportunity forever. Setting the bar too high has been the eventual death of many projects.

Think of adding committers as an investment in the future of your project, rather than as a reward for good behavior. Committers whom you add today will be the backbone of your project tomorrow, or five years from now. New committers are the only way to ensure the long-term sustainability of your project. Look for contributors who seem to have new ways of thinking.

Think of a committer as someone who is committed to the project, rather than just someone who writes code. Contributions in other areas, such as design, end-user support, event management, documentation, or project promotion, should also be welcomed into the project by inviting them as committers, and, eventually, as PMC members.

Finally, if you have specific requirements for committers (such as a period of time, or number of contributions) we encourage you to document that on your website. People like to know what their “career path” is in a project, rather than feeling that it is merely at the whim of a secret committee. If you see someone who seems to be on the path, point them to this document, so that they know what to expect, and what they can do to become a better contributor. See also Becoming A Committer for general advice you might offer.

Vote process

The complete policy and procedure around how to vote for a committer, and how to add them to the relevant rosters if and when they are voted in, is covered in the PMC policy document. As a PMC member, you should read and understand that document.

What to do when a committer is elected

Once a committer has been added to the roster, be sure that they understand how things work in your project, rather than leaving them to figure this out on their own.

Point them to specific review processes that they are expected to abide by before committing or merging a change.

Point new committers to Infra’s guide for new committers, which has general information for all ASF committers.

Consider clearly documenting the development environment that a committer needs to be successful. This might include a recommended IDE, how to interact with your CI/CD stack, how to build and test locally, and any common problems they might encounter with their first few commits.