Roles and Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities that people can assume in the project are based on merit. Everybody can help no matter what their role. Those who have been long term or valuable contributors to the project obtain the right to vote and commit directly to the source repository.

Users

Users are the people who use the products of the Project. People in this role aren't contributing code, but they are using the products, reporting bugs, making feature requests, and such. This is by far the most important category of people as, without users, there is no reason for the Project.

When a user starts to contribute code or documentation patches, they become a Contributor.

Contributors

Contributors are the people who write code or documentation patches or contribute positively to the project in other ways. A volunteer's contribution is always recognized. In source code, all volunteers who contribute to a source file may add their name to the list of authors for that file.

Committers

Contributors who give frequent and valuable contributions to a subproject of the Project can have their status promoted to that of a "Committer" for that subproject. A Committer has write access to the source code repository and gains voting rights allowing them to affect the future of the subproject.

In order for a Contributor to become a Committer, another Committer can nominate that Contributor or the Contributor can ask for it.

Once a Contributor is nominated, all of the Committers will vote. If there are at least 3 positive votes and no negative votes, the Contributor is converted into a Committer and given write access to the source code repository for the project.