STAF Project Roles

Users are the people who use STAF, without contributing code or documentation to the project. Users are encouraged to participate through the forums and mailing lists, asking questions, providing suggestions, and helping other users. Users are also encouraged to report problems using the Bug tracking system and request new features using the Request For Enhancement (RFE) tracking system. Anyone can be a user.

Contributor

A user who contributes back to STAF becomes a contributor. Contributors are the people who contribute enhancements, bug fixes, documentation, or other work that is incorporated into the system. A contributor does not have write access to the source code repository. Anyone can be a contributor.

Committer

A contributor who gives frequent contributions can be promoted to a committer. Committers have write access to (a subset of) the source code repository, and are developer members of the STAF SourceForge project. Committers should only commit code that they have written themselves (not code obtained from other contributors). All major contributions from a committer should be reviewed by one or more core team members before potential inclusion into the CVS repository. Part of the processing of contributions by a committer includes conducting reasonable due diligence to satisfy themselves that proposed contributions can be licensed under the terms of the Eclipse Public License (EPL), Common Public License (CPL), or an equivalent license.

A contributor can become a committer by the following sequential process:

1. They are nominated by an existing core team member,
2. At least 2 other core team members support their nomination, and
3. The STAF Steering Committee approves the nomination by majority vote

Becoming a committer is a privilege that is earned by contributing and showing good judgement. It is a responsibility that should be neither given nor taken lightly. Active participation on the forums and mailing lists is a responsibility of all committers, and is critical to the success of the project. Committers are responsible for proactively reporting problems via the bug tracking system, and annotating problem reports with status information, explanations, clarifications, or requests for more information from the submitter.

At times, committers may go inactive for a variety of reasons. The project relies on committers who respond to discussions in a constructive and timely manner. A committer that is disruptive, does not participate actively, or has been inactive for an extended period may have his or her commit status removed by the STAF Steering Committee.

Core Team Member

A committer who gives frequent and valuable contributions can be promoted to a core team member. Core team members have write access to the source code repository, and voting rights allowing them to affect the future of the project. The members of the core team are responsible for virtually all of the day-to-day technical decisions associated with the project. They are the gatekeepers, deciding what new code is added to the system. All contributions will be processed by one or more core team members before potential inclusion into the CVS repository. Part of the processing of contributions by a core team member includes conducting reasonable due diligence to satisfy themselves that proposed contributions can be licensed under the terms of the Eclipse Public License (EPL), Common Public License (CPL), or an equivalent license. The core team member(s) shall use his/her reasonable judgement to determine if the contribution can be contributed under the STAF project licensing policy.

A committer can become a core team member by the following sequential process:

1. They are nominated by an existing core team member,
2. At least 2 other core team members support their nomination, and
3. The STAF Steering Committee approves the nomination by majority vote

Becoming a core team member is a privilege that is earned by contributing and showing good judgement. It is a responsibility that should be neither given nor taken lightly. Active participation on the forums and mailing lists is a responsibility of all core team members, and is critical to the success of the project. Core team members are responsible for proactively reporting problems in the bug tracking system, and annotating problem reports with status information, explanations, clarifications, or requests for more information from the submitter. The core team also ensures that nightly builds are run on key supported platforms, performs regression testing before releasing a new version of STAF or one of its services, and opens defects to track regression test failures. A subset of the core team does most of this monitoring, however all core team members are expected to investigate regression test failures that might have been caused by a source code change they committed.

At times, core team members may go inactive for a variety of reasons. The project relies on active core team members who respond to discussions in a constructive and timely manner. A core team member that is disruptive, does not participate actively, or has been inactive for an extended period may have his or her commit status removed by the STAF Steering Committee.

Current Core Team Members

STAF Core Team

STAX Core Team

Services Core Team

Steering Committee

The STAF Steering Committee (SC) is a small group that is responsible for the strategic direction and success of the project. This governing and advisory body is expected to ensure the project's welfare and guide its overall direction. The SC is also authorized to create new subprojects, each with its own core team.

The initial STAF SC consisted of the founding core team members. Thereafter, to become a member of the SC, an individual must be nominated by a member of the SC, and unanimously approved by all SC members. The goal is to keep the membership of the SC very small. In the unlikely event that a member of the SC becomes disruptive to the process or ceases to contribute for an extended period, the member may be removed by unanimous vote of the remaining SC members.

Current Steering Committee