Contributor/Committer Process

Being a Contributor

Being a ZipTie contributor is probably one of the easiest ways to help the ZipTie community. A contributor is anyone who is involved in the ZipTie community as a whole.

Things you can do to be a contributor:

• Participate in the online forums. Field questions from new users, and engage in discussions.
• Live life on the edge: Run with nightly builds and provide feedback.
• Submit defects. Better yet, attach patches to defects.
• If you are a developer, create enhancements in Bugzilla and attach your contributions. Even if it's not integrated into the core, we'll be setting up a special area for plug-in contributions.

Being a regular contributor sets you on the road toward being a committer, if you're interested in that. Not all contributors have a desire to be a committer, many (maybe even most) are interested in enriching the community through their participation in the above areas. Or have web-design, artistic, or writing abilities that let them build the community in ways that are every bit as meaningful as code contribution.

Becoming a Committer

Becoming a committer is a longer process. To become a committer you must first demonstrate that you are a valuable contributor.

Here are some steps to take to get consideration as a committer:

• Be a regular contributor, especially with respect to code contributions.
• Be a regular participant in the IRC channel.
• Don't have thin-skin, other committers will tell you what they like/don't like about your solutions. Listen to them.
• Recognize the time involved in being a committer. Several hours per week are generally expected. Other developers will be dependent upon some of your work items. Disappearing for two weeks without warning is not cool.

The above will be taken into consideration when a vote of existing committers is held.

Proper open source etiquette is generally not to ask be wait to be offered. If you are making valuable contributions it will be recognized quickly. If you think you should become a committer, and an offer hasn't been forthcoming, talk privately with the developer you have closet ties with, he can propose a vote or give you feedback on how to close the gap if he thinks it too early. Votes will be held by email, with a reply of "+1" supporting, "-1" declining, and "0" abstaining. If a simple majority of existing committers vote to grant committer privileges, then committer status is granted. In the case of a tie with an even number of committers, for example 2 FOR/2 AGAINST, committer status is not granted. Note that a majority of existing committers must be obtained, not a majority of voting committers. If there are 10 committers and only 8 vote, 6 votes must still be FOR in order for committer status to be granted. Additionally, once a simple majority has been reached, the candidate can be informed of his acceptance, but votes can still be accepted so developers can "go on record". Committers should not be added to the committer mailing list until voting has been concluded.

If a potential committer has been denied committer status, another vote cannot be held for 30 days after the initial proffer, but can be held every 30 days if the sponsoring developer so wishes.

Guidelines for Code Committers and Contributors

ZipTie^? has coding style requirements to ensure the consistency of our codebase. If you're using Eclipse (and why wouldn't you), you'll find our Eclipse code formatter settings in the Build project. Please import these settings and apply them to your code (ctrl-shift-R).

Additionally, ZipTie^? has code templates for Eclipse that insert the appropriate class copyright headers. The formatter settings can also be found in the Build project, please import these into your Eclipse environment.

You can read our style guideline here.

Committers

LeoBayer
RyanKruse
DylanWhite
BrettWooldridge