Policies on Adding New Committers

Committer Group Overview

The DSpace Committers Group – named because they are authorized to "commit" change to the code repository – have ultimate responsibility for the shape of the DSpace software, as well as its architecture and design going forward. They can apply code changes contributed by the larger DSpace development community to the open source platform.

A list of the current members of the committers group can be seen at DSpaceContributors

How to Nominate a new Committer

New committers may be nominated by anyone in the DSpace Community at anytime. You can even nominate yourself.

For more hints/tips on nominating someone (or yourself) for Committership, please see Committer Nominations

Voting Rules

• Duration: 1 week or once an overall majority (of active Committers) is achieved, whichever comes first
• Votes: 1 vote per currently active member
  • If the newly nominated individual is from your institution, we ask that you kindly abstain from voting. However, you are more than welcome to add supportive comments.
• Vote options: +1 = YES, -1 = NO, 0 = DON'T MIND
• Vote counting: For a vote to pass, there must be at least 3 '+1' votes, and more '+1' votes than '-1' votes.

Email Invite

The standard invitation email reads:

Dear XXXX,

On behalf of all the DSpace committers, I would like to extend to you an
invitation to join the group. Your work on DSpace indicates an abiding
interest in the platform, and we all feel you would be a valuable
addition to our team.

Being a committer means participating in the evolution of the platform,
typically by making changes to the source code, or managing the
integration of contributions made by the community at large. But it also
means having a voice and a vote on technical, administrative and release
management issues, providing your expertise and guidance on the lists,
organizing testing, etc.

We are mindful of the fact that no one is being paid to do this, and no
specific time commitment is required or expected; in fact we *do* expect
that one's involvement will fluctuate over time with job duties. Nor is
there any specified term of office - one's job responsibilities may
change over time, and so one's ability to devote time to DSpace.

We ask that you seriously consider this offer, and hope that you will
accept it!

Sincerely,
The DSpace Committers Group

Stuff to do to get a new committer set up

• Add to the 'dspace-commit@googlegroups.com' email list:  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dspace-commit (Needs to be done by Tim or a Committer who knows the 'dspace-commit' listserv admin pwd)
• Add to 'dspace-committer' group in the Confluence Wiki, so they can manage all DSpace-related pages (Needs to be done by Tim or someone at LYRASIS)
  
  • https://wiki.lyrasis.org/browsepeople.action
• Assign their GitHub username "owner" access to our DSpace GitHub Organization and DSpace-Labs GitHub Organization (Can be done by any Committer)
  
  • Add their username to the "Committers" teams: https://github.com/organizations/DSpace/teams and https://github.com/orgs/DSpace-Labs/teams/committers/members
• Make sure the new committer is aware of the 'dspace-changelog' listserv. It's a very useful way to keep in touch with changes in GitHub. (Can be done by any Committer)
• Add them to list of committers on DSpace Committers  (Can be done by any Committer)
• Announce (see template) to dspace-community, dspace-devel, and dspace-tech email lists. If several committers are joining the group at once, consider sending one email for all, rather than separate emails. (Can be done by any Committer)
• Refer them to the Tips for New Committers (Though you should first double-check that content to ensure it is still up-to-date)  (Can be done by any Committer)