There are honorary and practical reasons why a project may view the PMC Chair and the project leader as one in the same.
Honorary: The community elevated one member as lead and assigned the Chair role out of respect. Practical: The PMC Chair has the power to dissolve the PMC, and is an officer of the Foundation. Nobody else on the project has such power nor indemnification. "Secretary" as a term does not adequately encompass that. > On Dec 29, 2014, at 6:46 AM, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > > > > On 12/23/2014 03:34 PM, sebb wrote: >>> Flex had three great mentors, but to expect them to be the PMC Chair on >>> >graduation would have been problematic. They were great mentors because >>> >they had lots of experience from their work on other Apache projects, and >>> >thus didn’t have time to stay active on a new TLP, plus they really >>> >weren’t users or developers of the technology, just our coaches on the >>> >Apache Way, and thus wouldn’t be good Chair candidates as they weren’t as >>> >invested in the technology. But they did stick around on at least the >>> >private@ lists and continue to do so even 2 years after graduation where >>> >we consult them on occasion. To require that a mentor be an active >>> >contributor limits the kinds of technologies that can come to Apache to >>> >only those who can interest someone with a lot of spare cycles. >>> > >>> >IMO, the mentors job is to teach, not to lead. >> The job of the PMC chair is almost entirely administrative. >> They are the link between the board and the PMC and their main role is >> to ensure the board gets timely reports and to feed back comments from >> the board. >> >> If a PMC is relying on the chair to drive it forward technically, then >> I think something has gone wrong with the PMC. >> > > Indeed. Big +1 on this. > > There are some projects that I've been watching lately where the PMC chair is > viewed as the project lead, and that has a number of problems that go along > with it. The PMC chair is a secretary, whose job is to file the right > paperwork. A *hugely* important role, but not a technical lead role. > > -- > Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen > http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
