Committer Promotion Process

Owned by Abhijit K
Last updated: Jul 17, 2020
4 min read

Committer Promotions

While the initial committers on a project are nominated at project formation, it is expected that community members will emerge as willing committers over time. Committer nomination and promotion must take place according to Section 2-f iii & Section 3 of the TSC Charter. This page intends to describe how the charter shall be interpreted in a practical step by step manner.

Prior to nomination

Project contributors who are interested in promotion to project committer should first approach the project lead and committer community to discuss their interest and receive feedback on their work within the community.

To be promoted to committer the TSC will be looking for the nominated contributors to have demonstrated:

  • A history of active contributions in the project

  • Has demonstrated to the project lead and committer a deep knowledge of the code and project best practices

  • Has shown a willingness to lead and coordinate amongst peers

Once the project lead and committers feel the candidate has demonstrated these items, the project lead or delegate should formally nominate the candidate and start a vote. Note that, at the end of the day, the vote of the committers is what matters, so who does the actual nomination is less important.

Nomination for committer promotion

The nomination for committer promotion begins with the project lead or delegate sending an e-mail to the <project>-dev list requesting the committers on the project vote on the nomination.

The nomination e-mail should begin with a clear topic name and be followed by a statement of motivation. The statement of motivation should describe any achievements or activities the contributor has performed of notable value for the project and may include a link to a git-log of the nominee's activity history. More than one contributor may be nominated in one nomination e-mail.

The e-mail may take the following form:

  • From: <project lead>

  • To: <project>-dev@lists.opendaylight.org

  • Nomination for new Committer(s): <contributors name(s)>

  • The motivation for nominating <contributors name> to committer on the <project> project is due to a long history of providing value to the project through consistent high quality and valuable contributions. <refer to relevant contributions and the value they provided to the project> I provide a link to the relevant contributions. <link>
    Please vote +1,0,-1 on whether you would like to see them as a committer.

Once the e-mail has been sent the nomination stands until a clear majority vote for or against the nomination has been met, or the nominator withdraws the nomination. Note that since the vote is binary rather than an election, simple +1,0,-1 voting conforms to the Condorcet or single transferable vote methods outlined in Section 3 of the TSC Charter.

While only project committers may vote, feedback from any and all community members is welcome during the nomination process and should be considered by both the project committers as well as the TSC.

If a majority of committers do not vote +1 after a reasonable effort has been made to contact them and a reasonable amount of time has passed, having all the cast votes be +1s has been interpreted as consensus as outlined in Section 3 of the TSC Charter and thus a majority vote is not required.

Addressing the TSC with a successful nomination

At the completion of a nomination process, if the vote indicated the nominee should be a committer, the nominator should address the TSC via the TSC mailing list tsc@lists.opendaylight.org by forwarding the nomination e-mail along with a summary of the outcome of the committer votes. Note: Please provide a link to a publicly accessible mailing list thread showing the votes.

The TSC Chair should respond to this e-mail either by scheduling time on an upcoming TSC call to have a formal vote or by starting an e-mail thread for the TSC to vote on. In general these votes are handled by e-mail unless there are concerns that require higher-bandwidth exchanges.

The TSC will consider the following as relevant to the decision:

  • The nomination process and the outcome as captured by the project lead or delegate

  • The number of committers on the project and the need for an increase in committers

  • The contributions the nominee has made to the project

  • Any community feedback received around the nomination or nominee

The TSC will vote on the nomination according to the voting methods outlined in Section 3 of the TSC Charter. The outcome of the vote will be recorded in the minutes of the meeting or publicly recorded on the TSC mailing list along with any associated reasoning for the decision that has been taken.

If the vote on the TSC is successful, the TSC chair should notify the nominator and nominee. After that, it is the nominator's responsibility to send mail to helpdesk@opendaylight.org to open a support ticket to have the new committer's rights granted. That mail should provide a link to the TSC mailing list and/or TSC meeting minutes showing the successful TSC vote.

If the vote on the TSC was not successful the reasoning and motivations for the decision will be captured in the meeting minutes or mailing list. The project lead may choose to act to redress the captured reasoning and once ready nominate the contributor once more following the above described process.