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Re: [rdf4j-dev] Taking a step back

On 10 Feb 2017, at 05:45, Håvard Ottestad <hmottestad@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear you go Jeen, but congratulations on new opportunities.

Thanks :)

I've contributed the new RDFS reasoner, which focuses on performance. I would love to keep improving the performance of other aspects of rdf4j. How can I become a contributor?

Well, you already are a contributor :) Eclipse makes a distinction between contributors and committers. Becoming a contributor is easy - you sign the digital CLA, and you can start putting up pull requests. This is what you have done with the RDFS reasoner.

Becoming a full committer is a bit more involved though. Full committers get access to all the devops tools, get git write access, and can plan and execute releases. They are also expected to follow Eclipse’s IP due diligence processes (see the committer guidelines for details), so it’s not a privilege given lightly. 

There’s two main parts to becoming a committer: legal paperwork, and community elections. 

First of all: paperwork. To become a committer, Eclipse Foundation needs to receive the necessary legal paperwork from you and/or your employer. What exact documents are needed depends on your employment situation (see the overview in the Project Handbook for details), but my guess is that you work for a company that is not a member of Eclipse. In this case you need to submit two documents:  

  1. an Individual Contributor Agreement (ICA) - this is something you personally sign (note that this is not the same thing as the digital CLA you signed before).
  2. an Eclipse Committer Employer Consent Form (ECECF) - this is something your employer needs to sign.

You can find links to both documents (+ explanation) in the Project Handbook.

The second part of becoming a committer is a community vote. See the “committer elections” section in the Project Handbook for more details, but briefly: it requires that you already are a contributor (which you are) and have the trust of the existing project committers (which, speaking for myself, you have). The election is a formal vote: any existing committer can nominate you, by submitting a statement of merit (a short blurb of text describing why you’d be a good addition to the team, pointing out your past contributions, etc.) The other rdf4j committers then have one week to cast their votes (we need a majority voting in favour, and any committer can veto). Assuming the vote completes in your favour, the Eclipse Technology PMC reviews the election and approves or vetoes the nomination. 

That’s the process. It sounds difficult but in practice it’s mostly a formality - I don’t expect that any existing committer (let alone the PMC) would veto an election.

Cheers,

Jeen



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