PMC proposals/Interpretation of bylaw 11

Summary

Clause 11 of the bylaws currently states:

11. Committer access is received by committing code and getting sponsorship by two existing Committers, a nominator and a seconder. Upon fulfillment of these conditions, a PMC member will give write access.

The interpretation of the PMC to date has been that committer access is granted upon sponsorship of two existing PMC members. I propose to either:

1) Adopt the current wording

or

2) Amend the bylaws to state 'PMC members' in place of 'Committers'

(If '1' is selected, the vote should be summarised as 'Accepted'; if '2' is selected, the vote should be summarised as 'Bylaws amended').

Proposed by: Jimregan (talk)

Seconded by:

Considering the discussion in the comments below, here is a third option to vote for, summarised as "Bylaws amended with voting specified":

3) Amend bylaw 11 to say:

11. Committer access is received by contributing code and getting sponsorship by an existing Committer. Upon fulfillment of these conditions, the PMC votes on granting access. As an exception to bylaw 19, a majority vote is not required, only 2 more yes-votes than no-votes.

Amend bylaw 19 to say:

19. The Project Management Committee votes on all of its decisions, by affirmative vote by an absolute majority of members of the PMC. The President has the casting vote.

Option 3 proposed by: unhammer (talk) 14:38, 3 February 2015 (CET)

Seconded by:

Comments

• I think the current wording of Bylaw 11 "Committer access is received by committing code and getting sponsorship by two existing Committers, a nominator and a seconder. Upon fulfillment of these conditions, a PMC member will give write access." should be changed to "Committer access is received by committing code and getting sponsorship by two existing Committers, a nominator and a seconder. Upon fulfillment of these conditions, the PMC will vote on write access according to bylaw 18 e" --Mlforcada (talk) 09:11, 30 January 2015 (CET)
  • So they still have to commit code in order to be allowed to commit code? --unhammer (talk) 10:55, 30 January 2015 (CET)
    • There are ways to contribute without committing. They can send patches, etc. This is the usual procedure at the beginning of GSoC or GCI.--Mlforcada (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2015 (CET)
      • Perhaps we could reword it to "… by contributing code and …"? --unhammer (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2015 (CET)
  • How would voting work? If we don't specify, this is even worse. Currently we have a practice of requiring 4 PMC members to say yes; but just saying "vote" could mean anything from "one person is enough" to "everyone has to have voted and nothing happens until everyone has said something" to "everyone has to say yes, a single no means no commit access" etc etc. --unhammer (talk) 10:55, 30 January 2015 (CET)
    • Good point, perhaps one should specify "affirmative vote by an absolute majority of members of the PMC"--Mlforcada (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2015 (CET)
      • I think that'd be good to have in 19 (regardless of whether we make an exception for commit access or not). --unhammer (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2015 (CET)

• I think we should change "committer" to PMC member. e.g. they need sponsorship by two PMC members instead of just two committers. - Francis Tyers (talk) 13:30, 2 February 2015 (CET)
  • Agreed.--Mlforcada (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2015 (CET)
  • +1, that'd be more in line with current practice, and more explicit. I now see that Mikel wrote to pmc-list Dec.30 2014 that 18e says "The responsibilities of the Project Management Committee include [...] Giving access rights to new Committers" and that this should be interpreted as "a majority PMC vote (4 members) is required in order to grant commit access". To interpret 18e as requiring a majority vote, you also have to include 19 which says "the PMC votes on all its decisions". However, I do not agree that we would have to change 18e in order to require only 2 PMC members to grant commit access. Note that 19 says nothing about how voting works; a voting system where we require 2 yes'es and no no's is still a voting system. In any case, we should be explicit about how this works, otherwise it's hard to tell if any of our decisions are really final. --unhammer (talk) 14:46, 2 February 2015 (CET)
    • See above--Mlforcada (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2015 (CET)
    • I agree with Unhammer here, for me a voting system where +1 = yes, -1 = no and we require >= 2 votes sounds good to me. - Francis Tyers (talk) 18:02, 2 February 2015 (CET)
      • For all Decisions or only commit access? --unhammer (talk) 18:07, 2 February 2015 (CET)
        • Just for commit access. - Francis Tyers (talk) 11:02, 3 February 2015 (CET)
  • I'd say sponsor by 1 PMC member. Otherwise, what is the difference between sponsoring and giving your +1 vote? The one who initiates the PMC vote is the sponsor. Tino Didriksen (talk) 17:49, 2 February 2015 (CET)