One of the more puzzling issues in an Apache project is figuring out when the existing members of a ProjectManagementCommittee should invite a new member. It's one of those NotTooHotNotTooCold. If you set too high a barrier you get assorted problems: elitism, lack of new blood, new guys wander off, etc. etc. If you set the barrier to low then you get a mess of other problems: members tend to be untested, have marginal loyality, don't understand the community very well, etc. etc.
The HTTPD project struggled with this for a long time and settled in on a rule of thumb.
{{{ "New members are invited in after six months of
- constructive consistent contributions." }}}
What this says:
- Six Months: helps us to avoid loading up the committee with members who are just passing thru to scratch a transitory itch. It also helps to provide a long enough window that we can assure that we are inviting in people who will be a constructive (as verses a pain in the butt) addition to the community.
- Constructive: helps us to avoid bringing on board abrasive jerks who lack much interest in doing the hard work of mixing together diverse goals, skills, and perceptions to get a clever useful outcome. Presumably this could also be used as an excuse to avoid inviting in a person who is a pleasure to work with but who's code seems to create a pattern of security or other bugs.
- Contributions: helps us to make it clear that inside of this project is contributions we are interested in. We are a little suspicious of opinionists, we lean toward people that contribute stuff.
This simple rule is what we hope to achieve when looking to give membership to those that merit it. We attempt to avoid making the barrier higher than this. It is always a challenge to make it clear that contribution may not be exactly what a prior member contributed.
See also: CommitRights, RightsOverTheCode, ProjectManagementCommittee