The PMC Chair serves as the project’s voice to the board and handles quarterly reporting.

While typically a senior, respected community leader, the Chair is not the project leader but a peer among PMC members, with the same voting rights and authority as other PMC members, who has accepted additional secretarial and spokesperson responsibilities.

The Chair must familiarize themselves with the assigned duties of the role.

Secretarial duties

The Chair is responsible for completing the necessary processes when the PMC adds committers and members.

See the process for adding new committers, and the process for adding new PMC members, for details of these requirements.

Reporting

The Chair files the quarterly project report to the board of directors.

Moderating discussion

The Chair may need to moderate discussions to ensure the community maintains appropriate conduct and avoids divisive conversations.

Since the Chair has been selected as a respected community member, they should model and encourage established community standards and enforce expectations for appropriate behavior on official communication channels.

Selecting a new Chair

Projects may periodically select a new Chair.

Some projects rotate Chairs every year or two, while others maintain the same Chair for many years. A Chair might step down due to time constraints or to provide others with leadership opportunities.

Inform Chair candidates about the workload to ensure they have sufficient availability and understand the role’s requirements.

The outgoing Chair should mentor the incoming Chair, familiarizing them with Chair’s duties to ensure a successful transition.

See also:

New Chairs receive this advice and should read it thoroughly. They should also review published policies for PMCs.