Process for Granting Commit Access

The Process in Brief

  1. It's expected that aspiring committers will earn the trust of the community by participating in our discussions and submitting clear, well-written pull requests for review.
  2. A potential new committer is nominated by a member of the community. This should be done publicly on the fluid-work mailing list.
  3. Current committers vote privately on the nomination. This allows committers to honestly share their opinions and assess the candidate's suitability and experience. It also avoids hurt feelings and a culture of personal criticism. A private, moderated mailing list, committers, has been be set up for this purpose. Typical voting rules apply: +1 for agreement; if you vote -1, please include a rationale and what will be required to change the vote to a +1.
  4. Not everyone is required to vote, but if you know the nominee's work and code, you are encouraged to vote. Non-votes will be treated as 0.
  5. The voting period will last for a minimum of a week, or until all current committers have voted.
  6. One vote of -1 automatically disqualifies a nomination for commit access. The nominee will be informed of the rationale and what they need to do to change the vote to +1 in the future. It is highly recommended that a rejected nominee be paired up with members of the commmitters team to mentor them into a successful committer.
  7. If a nomination is denied, a member of the committers group will provide an explanation and coach the candidate on how they may earn commit access in the future.
  8. If the committer is accepted, they will be given access to Fluid's GitHub repositories and will be subscribed to the commits mailing list. The commits list is public and archived.

Responsibilities of Commit Access

Commit access to the Fluid Project repository is a responsibility. Committers agree to:

  • Remain subscribed to the commits mailing list.
  • Communicate their progress, designs, and intentions publicly to the fluid-work mailing list.
  • Review and comment constructively on code in their area of expertise.
  • Vote on new committers whose work they are familiar with.
  • Respect boundaries: commit access to the Fluid repository is global. Use it wisely and ask first. If you're unfamiliar with a particular area of the code, ask someone to review and commit your changes for you. Talk to maintainers and experts who know about the module you're contributing to; don't commit code to an area that someone else is working on without talking with them about it first.

Committer Emeritus

Committers sometimes become inactive for a variety of reasons. To keep the repository secure and to simplify commit access-related processes, inactive committers are given the status of Committer Emeritus. Committer emeriti no longer have access to push to Fluid's GitHub repositories and are not expected to participate in community governance issues. However, if a commiter emeritus returns to the project at a later date and asks for commit access, they can be reinstated without a vote. Committer emeriti are listed on the committer's list as such.

Committers become emeriti either:

  • When they request committer emeritus status
  • After six months of inactivity