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PPMC FAQs

Here are a number of FAQ's about how the Apache OpenOffice project governance works.

Contents

What is the PPMC?

The Podling Project Management Committee (PPMC) is the government of the project. It consists of ASF mentors and initial committers. The committee is responsible for the project and decides what to do and which direction to go.
(see here for more information)

Who is the Admin/Moderator/Owner for X?

Although Apache projects have few formal roles, there are some technical subsystems which have admin or similar roles filled by project volunteers. If you have a question with one of these systems, these are the people you might want to contact first, before escalating to Apache Infrastructure.

Mailing lists

Each mailing list has one or more moderators. They can often help you if you are having trouble subscribing or are wondering why your emails are not making it through.

• ooo-dev moderators are Rob Weir,
• ooo-users moderators are Rob Weir, Simon Phipps,
• ooo-security is a restricted access list, with Rob Weir, Dennis Hamilton, Wolf Halton and Juergen Schmidt as members. New members can be added by consensus of the PPMC and via a request to Apache Infra.

Blog

Blog authors: You must be a committer. To establish a Roller account contact Infrastructure.

Blog admins: Admins authorize new authors once they have first established a Roller account.

Bugzilla

Raphael?

SVN

All committers have equal access. If you need to do something beyond ordinary committ rights, such as importing a dump file, enter a JIRA issue with Apache Infra.

Confluence Wiki

• OOOUSERS. This wiki is open to anyone with a CWiki account.
• OOODEV. This wiki may only be edited by project committers, PPMC, and iCLA signers.

Dave Fisher has Confluence Admin rights and can authorize new editors in the OOODEV Wiki.

MediaWiki.

TJ Frazier has Administrator rights and can enable others. Email him (on ooo-dev or privately) to activate an existing account, or set up a new one.

How to participate?

First of all you have to think how you want to participate as we have different kind of roles like user, developer, committer. The easiest way is to use what we build as user. If you want to improve parts of the software, or documentation, write to our mailing lists what should be modified and how it should be done. On the community wiki you can just create an account and start to work on it right away. There is a Help Wanted page that has ideas for getting started.

The following are conditions to become a committer:

1. You have sent in patches that were well-respected to improve the software.
2. You have added documentation to the Wiki or website that were well-respected to improve the non-code part of the project.
3. You have shown that you can discuss in the mailing lists and that this has brought us forward.
4. You are well known to the established members, who you are and what you have done in the past. Regarding this project, a former-one or another project.

If 1 of the 4 statements above are true, then you can be voted in as committer.

When the vote result is positive, you will be asked for some information to setup your committer status. Read the Participation guide for more information.

I was invited/voted as committer, so whats next?

The following is a brief summary of what to expect as committer:

1. After your (individual Contributor License Agreement (iCLA) has been received and registered, you will be invited to specify one or more preferred Apache user names.

   Important:
   The e-mail address you provide in your iCLA will be used for the following communications with you.

   Please note that there is also a Corporate Contributor License Agreement (CCLA) if you want/have to commit in the name of a company or organization.

2. Choose one or more user name(s) that would be acceptable to you. These are short names or abbreviation that will be used for a Unix account login.

   Example:
   Your name is "John Doe", so an ID could be "johnd" or "jdoe". Here you can see if the ID is still free or already given to another committer.

   Supply all other information that is requested. Return the ID requests as instructed.

3. When your choices are returned, the first request that does not conflict with an already-issued ID will be used to generate an Apache ID. Write them in the order you would like to have, so the first one is the most wanted.

4. You will receive an e-mail, from "root@apache.org", that confirms the Apache user name for you and also provides you with an initial password. There are also instructions for changing your password. Please be patient as this mail can take some days.

5. The ID will also be your Apache e-mail address. Note that the account will be set up to forward all received mails to the e-mail address you supplied on your iCLA. It is not a normal mail account but just for forwarding. After you have the account there is also a way to associate your Apache e-mail address with additional e-mail addresses that you have. (ToDo: Add a link to a how-to)

6. The ID and password will allow you to check in changes and new additions on the Apache SVN repository for the OpenOffice.org incubator repository. The ability to check in material on the SVN repository is important for more than code. All committers will have an use for it.

7. The ID and password will allow you to login to a personal Unix account on the Apache server "people.apache.org". You can produce a personal website at this account as well as use it as a regular Unix (specifically, FreeBSD) account. You do not need to be able to use this account. You may find it useful as you become more accomplished as a committer.
   

8. Being a committer also grants access to some non-public resources and mailing lists. There are details in the private committers SVN tree.

See the Guide for new committers and the Committers' FAQ for more information.

How and when to vote?

Voting is done when a formal decision has to be made or due to legal reasons, e.g., to vote in new members as committers. In any case avoid voting as the normal way is to come to a decision by discussions. The initiator is responsible for the vote, that means also to count the votes and present the result. Every member has 1 vote.
(see here for more information)

How to I update the Podling Status File?

It is important to keep our Status File up to date as our podling evolves toward graduation. Examples of things that should be updated include:

1. When a new mailing list is created
2. When a new committer is announced
3. When the podling has made a release
4. When the podling has submitted a new report
5. Other newsworthy accomplishments

Updating the status report is not very difficult, though it is not as easy as updating a wiki or a web page via the CMS. But is certainly straightforward if you have a Linux desktop.

First, check out the website source:

svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/public/trunk incubator

Then edit the incubator/site-author/projects/openofficeorg.xml file in a text editor to add your new content. The XML should be self-explanatory. Just copy what you see there.

Then go back up to the incubator dir and run ant to rebuild the site:

ant

Take a look at the generated output in incubator/site-publish/projects/openofficeorg.html to make sure you like the results. Repeat the editing and running ant until you have what you want.

When you are ready to commit your changes you do:

svn commit

Note that you will be checking in two files: the source XML in incubator/site-author/projects as well as the generated html in incubator/site-publish/projects

One that is done you need to check out the changed html into the production website:

ssh <apache-id>@people.apache.org
cd /www/incubator.apache.org
svn update

Due to caching your changes may not be evident immediately on the public website.