Note: this is a draft written by individual(s) and no way represents the guidance or stand of the CloudStack PMC.

Start: http://theapacheway.com/ and http://cloudstack.apache.org/contribute.html

Getting involved in the project:

• Join the mailing lists (at least the users and dev ML): http://cloudstack.apache.org/mailing-lists.html

• Read the bylaws: http://cloudstack.apache.org/bylaws.html

• Onboard and get familiar with various project and developer resources: http://cloudstack.apache.org/developers.html

• Suggestion: Contributing to CloudStack

Caveat: it's not mandatory to contribute only code to become a committer but that's a known path, there are also other MUCH needed roles and contributions in non-technical areas such as marketing and promotion and general participation (on mailing lists, Github, events and conferences), documentation, architecture/design, issue reporting and release testing and voting.

General Guidance for becoming a committer:

• Join the MLs, ask questions, participate in discussions, learn and help others

• Improve code by sending PR (feature and bugs) and triage/review open issue

• Improve documentation (send PR to https://github.com/apache/cloudstack-documentation )

• Help review, test other’s PRs and give feedback both on Github and dev MLs

• Participate in release voting and testing, bug reporting, triaging and fixing issues

• Some ideas to improve your visibility in the community:

  • Pick problems others are not solving but necessary for the project or demand or requirement exists

  • Manage and improve the health of the project (work/test on releases, fixing bug reports, helping users, docs)

  • Promote the project on blogs, social media, speak/talk, and represent in local users groups, conferences etc.

  • Build healthy relationships with other contributors (for example, other PMC members and committers)

  • Help with other people’s PRs and issues, provide support to users (via issues, docs, users ML) and participate in at least the dev and users ML

• The PMC is responsible for inviting new committers and PMC members to the project. If someone demonstrates their commitment to the project over a sustained period (say 6-12months), they may be recognised by the PMC members and lobby/proposed for a PMC voting, and invited to become a committer.

• Bottomline: only the PMC members can propose, discuss, vote and invite somebody to become a project committer or PMC member

Additional suggestions:

• There is also project housekeeping and project process updates to be done.

  • If you spot something that could be improved. Suggest it (but be prepared for everyone to say ‘good idea’ then expect you to do it - you need to follow through).

  • The CloudStack wiki always needs some love.

  • Apache has GitHub actions enabled, think up some workflows which could help, try them in your own Github account and then propose them

• On top of good community work, you need to be seen to be doing good community work to PMC members.

• Some objective areas that could be considered:

Note: A PMC member need NOT review or adhere to guidelines mentioned in this wiki, and it's upto their discretion to vote in favour or otherwise for anybody. For example, somebody meeting the objective criteria but aren't working together cordially in the community may not find support with PMCs (Community over code).

Finding help while helping yourself and others:

• Check if an issue or topic was previously discussed, search on the ASF archive or google

• Check if there a prior bug report or pull request exists:
  https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/pulls
  https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/issues

• Read the docs: http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org

Additional Reading

http://www.apache.org/foundation/getinvolved.html
https://community.apache.org/contributors/
https://infra.apache.org/new-committers-guide.html

Misc links and references:

• https://camel.apache.org/manual/faq/how-do-i-become-a-committer.html
• https://kylin.apache.org/development40/howto_become_apache_committer.html
• https://github.com/apache/cordova-new-committer-and-pmc/blob/master/README.md
• https://medium.com/@shanecurcuru/who-s-who-at-apache-roles-and-responsibilities-3524264b9e7e
• https://shardingsphere.medium.com/would-you-like-to-become-an-apache-committer-5d88e781bb75
• Some opensource communities have public documentation on membership such as
  • https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/github-management/new-membership-procedure.md
  • https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/community-membership.md