PPMCs
Description
To make Incubating project learn to govern themselves and govern themselves at the same time, each project has a PPMC (a place where to practice having a PMC) that works similarly to a PMC but reports to the Incubator PMC instead of the board.
Members of the PPMC
- project developers-committers
- landing PMC members that want to help (if there is a landing PPMC)
- Incubator PMC members that want to help
The Mentors are the only ones /required/ to participate on the -dev list. The other Incubator members would have to "catch up" to the extent that PPMC discussion requires external context.
Incubator PMC members not engaged in active development or discussion on a project are still able to eventually intervene in quality of observers. They should refrain from voting on project decisions unless really necessary, thus acting as vetoers of last resort.
Reporting the the main Incubator PMC
Development and discussions go on the dev lists, where the Mentors are the ones doing active oversight.
The status updates are posted to general@incubator.apache.org, prior ACK from any Incubator PMC member.
FAQ
Joe Developer: "So, how does this 'incubation' thing work then?" Website: "Well, we want to do our best to make new projects feel welcome at the ASF, and we want the ASF to feel comfortable bringing the new project under its hood. This requires a get-to-know-the-ropes period, which we call incubation. We establish something dubbed a PPMC, which is a mailing list where a project's core group learns how to deal with all those 'serious' intricacies that come with being a part of the ASF, like quarterly reports, voting in committers, STATUS file management, voting procedures, etc etc.
Also, we'll take a good look at any IP/licensing/copyright/trademark issues that may exist during the incubation process. As soon as it is clear that a project has truely captured the ASF spirit and all legal issues are sorted out, the project leaves incubation and lives on on its own."
Joe Developer: "So, what is this PPMC thing?" Website: "A mailing list where the project's core group learns what it means to be part of the ASF. To help them do that, there's a group of ASF people called the Incubator PMC. Also, there will often be other interested ASF members to help out and answer questions."
Joe PPMC Member: "So how do I...?" Website: "We don't have clean answers to most of those questions (yet). Just post an e-mail about the question/issue/problem, and we'll figure things out together."
Joe PPMC Member: "I don't have any more questions!" Website: "Well, good! Go on then, out of the womb, go and manage things on your own. By the way, would you be interested in a position on the Incubator PMC to help out new projects?"