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The information contained in this page is unoffical advice rather than rules that have been officially adopted by the Commons team. It was founded by observations of the goings on in the commons from the subproject's creation till the present.

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Mailing Lists

Wiki MarkupThe commons components share just two lists. Questions about components are best asked on user@commons. Development is organized on dev@commons. Before posting questions to the \[http://commons.apache.org/mail-lists.html#Commons list\], users are requested to search the archives to see if the question has been answered before.

When sending mail, please add a prefix containing the name of the component. For example, if the mail concerns *commons-foo*, the subject should be prefixed with *\[foo\]*. The volumes on the development list are high. This can be difficult to manage without using filters to sort the mail. Most email clients allow filtering on subject and this convention allow developers to pick out the components they are interested in more quicky.  

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• Discuss and try to formulate a consensus first. Promotion votes can (and do) get messy unless this happens. Create a discussion thread on the list and try to find out any reasons people might have for voting against. You might need to alter your charter, add missing files or resolve dependency issues. It's easy for everyone if all main issues are sorted before you propose the proper VOTE. If revisions to the proposal are required, the VOTEing can get very messy.
  

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  Post a promotion email whose subject and body make it clear that this is a formal promotion VOTE. The subject should be prefixed by {{\[VOTE\]}} and should be something like {{\[VOTE\] Promote commons-foo}}. The body should be clear and fairly formal. \\

• Proposal - always include a copy of the PROPOSAL that's being VOTE'd on in the VOTE email. This is important since it is clear to everyone what they are VOTEing on. It also prevents being put in the embarasing position of the PROPOSAL being VOTE'd on being modifed in CVS half way through a VOTE thread.
  

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  Please give the proposal enough time to give everything the chance to VOTE. I leave promotion VOTEs several days - maybe up to a week. When VOTEs have stopped coming in then please the proposer should post a {{\[RESULT\]\[VOTE\]}} giving counts. Only the VOTEs of commons committers are binding so please make sure that these are tallied separately. The reason why a result email is good is that VOTE thread tend to peter out and so without a final email, it's hard to look back through the archives and find out what's happened. Another reason is that it's a good way to let everyone know what the result was. If there are any disagreements about the result, they can be resolved then.