First a clarification- as provisional constructs of the Incubator PMC, podlings have no official standing in the corporation known as The Apache Software Foundation. So technically, it is a farce to claim that podlings have any formal rights whatsoever. What we write about here are promises and covenants the Incubator PMC will make a good-faith effort to honor.
- First, podlings have a right to expect active participation and guidance from their mentors. That minimally includes participation in release votes, discussions and votes on new personnel, and signing off on a podling's quarterly reports.
2. Mentoring is done solely for the podling's benefit, and as such podlings have the right to fire mentors for any reason by a majority consensus vote on their private list. Just don't be denigrating about it, since mentors are always volunteers and not paid staff.
3. Podlings who find themselves in need of additional mentors have the right to ask general@incubator for more mentors to volunteer.
4. Podlings have the right to expect their quarterly reports to be read, reviewed, and critiqued by "shepherds" on the Incubator PMC, who are typically outside the podling's set of mentors.
5. Podlings have the right to express private concerns about anything related to their incubation to the Incubator Ombudsman <ombudsman@incubator>, who will handle such communications as if they were sent anonymously.
6. Podlings have the right to express their opinions concerning their incubation efforts post-graduation (or post-mortem) in the form of an anonymous survey.
7. Podlings have the right to ignore commentary made on general@incubator in the middle of a VOTE thread, especially during releases. Reminder- release votes are a majority consensus vote, so seeing a few -1's occasionally is expected and often ignorable by the RM should they otherwise see a majority of at least 3 binding IPMC votes.
8. Podling committers have the right to remain unsubscribed to general@incubator. Any relevant policy/process changes will be passed along by the podling's mentors.