Our new IP Policy has established the role of Committers.  Committers are Contributors who have the authority to approve Projects being placed into the Catalogs.  

We have based our Committer selection process somewhat on the process used in Eclipse, where the Committers are elected to that position through a vote of the existing Committers.  Like Eclipse, Committers are those whose technical capabilities and project participation have gained them respect in the community.

Today, we have seven Committers, six of whom manage the code in the Apache Catalog, but only one who manages code in the GPL catalog.  So, we are calling for people to volunteer to be nominated and elected as GPL Committers.

So, what does a Committer do?  When someone wants to submit a Project to a Catalog, the IP Manager (that's me) scans the code for IP issues.  Once those issues have been cleared up (which may require some changes to the submission), the Committer goes to work.  The Committer makes sure that the submission runs, does what it is supposed to do, and is properly documented.  A Committer may raise an objection if, for example, the submission does not include all the source, or requires a key from a third party to execute.  Basically the Committer helps to ensure that the OpenNTF Catalog contains only high quality Projects.  

We currently have seven GPL submissions in the pipeline – which will be ready for a Committer's consideration once the IP issues have been cleared.  If you are ready willing and able to lend a hand to help with these, and strengthen the GPL Catalog side of OpenNTF – please send me an email to IP-Manager at openntf dot org.  

Peter Tanner
IP Manager



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