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The release is coordinated by the Release Manager (RM). Since this job requires coordination of the development community (and access to SVN), only committers to the project can be RM. However, there is no set RM. Any committer may perform a release at any time. In order to facilitate communication, it is deemed polite to alert the community with your planned release schedule before executing the release. A release should only be made when there is a plan to publicly release it. (A release should not be made only for private distribution. A private release snapshot is more suitable for that.)
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Non-committers may cast a vote for a release's quality. In fact, this is extremely encouraged as it provides much-needed feedback to the community about the release's quality. However, only binding votes casted cast by committers count towards the designation. Note that no one may veto a release. The PMC or the release manager may revoke all votes on a release if a new major problem is discovered prior to publication of a release and request a revote. However, once there are greater than 3 positive votes, the release may be made at any time. In addition, the RM may decide against making a release even if the required votes have been made.
Full (general availability) releases require 3 +1's from PMC members. This is unfortunate, but it's a requirement of the ASF's bylaws.
Pre-releases and RC's can be created and uploaded with just committer votes –
but they cannot be uploaded to the "real" website download directories. Instead, make it clear that this is an unofficial "test build" by placing it in your public_html dir, e.g. http://people.apache.org/~jm/devel/ .
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