The Apache Software Foundation

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The Project Management Committee (PMC) is responsible for the oversight of the project, including technical decisions, ensuring that the project is operating in accordance with ASF norms, adding new members to the project, and voting on releases.

Conducting Business

The PMC is expected to conduct all of its business on the public developers mailing list, in the full view of the community.

The private@ list is for communication about private matters, such as discussion of proposed committers, proposed new PMC members, and communication from the Board of Directors. Do not use it for discussion of features, roadmap, or other technical decisions.

The Board of Directors will occasionally send you comments or queries, often related to your quarterly board report. Any PMC member can, and should, respond to these. You should not wait for the Chair to respond to these queries.

The PMC is tasked with making decisions on the direction of the project, They can, and should, also incorporate the voice of the larger community in these decisions. However, if a vote is taken, only the votes of the PMC are binding on the outcome. Other community members may vote as well, but those votes are advisory only, and not binding.

A PMC member may veto a technical decision, such as a proposed patch. However, they must be able to back this veto up with a technical reason, and be willing to discuss possible resolutions to their objection.

Further discussion of voting may be found on the Foundation website.

Making a release

The process for releasing a official Apache software artifact may be found on the Infra website. As a PMC member, you are expected to read and understand that process.

When you vote on a release, it should be an indication that you have actually tested that release. In your vote email, rather than merely voting +1 or -1, also indicate what you tested, and on what platform(s).

Ensuring Project Health

The PMC is tasked individually and collectively with ensuring that the project is behaving according to ASF policies and norms. In this responsibility, PMC members act as individuals, not as representatives of their employer, or other third-party interests. The reputation of the project, and the ASF in general, is delegated to PMC members in this respect.

Projects should operate in a vendor neutral fashion. That is to say, any project participant has an equal voice, unrelated to the employer or lack thereof. Evidence that a project is favoring one company or organization over another is a serious offense. For example, if members of a particular organization are favored over another, for either addition to the committer roll, the PMC, or for acceptance of their patches, this is an indication that the employer is exerting undue influence over the direction of the project.

The PMC is also expected to set the tone for conduct and interactions in the project. They can, and should, call out behavior that is in conflict with ASF norms, such as bullying, racist or sexist discussions, or other abusive behavior.

Adding Community Members

The PMC is also tasked with the sustainability of the project. An important part of this is regularly adding new committers and new PMC members. This is not the sole role of the chair. Rather, every PMC member can, and should, regularly look at who is participating in the project, and evaluate whether they should be invited to the next rung of the contributor ladder.