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/* $Id: RFC3_COMMITERS.dox,v 1.6 2006/10/30 19:54:51 fwarmerdam Exp $ */
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/*!
\page rfc3_commiters RFC 3: GDAL Commiter Guildlines

Author: Frank Warmerdam<br>
Contact: warmerdam@pobox.com<br>
Status: Adopted<br>

\section rfc3_purpose Purpose

To formalize SVN (or CVS) commit access, and specify some guidelines for 
SVN committers.


\section rfc3_elect Election to SVN Commit Access

Permission for SVN commit access shall be provided to new developers only if 
accepted by the GDAL/OGR Project Steering Committee.  A proposal should be 
written to the PSC for new committers and voted on normally.  It is not 
necessary to write an RFC document for these votes, a proposal to gdal-dev
is sufficient.

Removal of SVN commit access should be handled by the same process.

The new committer should have demonstrated commitment to GDAL/OGR and 
knowledge of the GDAL/OGR source code and processes to the committee's 
satisfaction, usually by reporting bugs, submitting patches, and/or actively 
participating in the GDAL/OGR mailing list(s).

The new committer should also be prepared to support any new feature or 
changes that he/she commits to the GDAL/OGR source tree in future releases, 
or to find someone to which to delegate responsibility for them if he/she 
stops being available to support the portions of code that he/she is 
responsible for.

All committers should also be a member of the gdal-dev mailing list so they 
can stay informed on policies, technical developments and release preparation.

New commiters are responsible for having read, and understood this document.

\section rfc3_tracking Committer Tracking

A list of all project committers will be kept in the main gdal directory 
(called COMMITERS) listing for each SVN committer:

<ul>
<li> Userid: the id that will appear in the SVN logs for this person.
<li> Full name: the users actual name.
<li> Email address: A current email address at which the committer can be reached. It may be altered in normal ways to make it harder to auto-harvest.
<li> A brief indication of areas of responsibility.
</ul>

\section rfc3_admin SVN Administrator

One member of the Project Steering Committee will be designed the SVN 
Administrator. That person will be responsible for giving SVN commit access 
to folks, updating the COMMITERS file, and other SVN related management. That 
person will need login access on the SVN server of course.

Initially Frank Warmerdam will be the SVN Adminstrator.

\section rfc3_practice SVN Commit Practices

The following are considered good SVN commit practices for the GDAL/OGR 
project.

<ul>
<li> Use meaningful descriptions for SVN commit log entries.
<li> Add a bug reference like "(bug 1232)" at the end of SVN commit log 
entries when committing changes related to a bug in bugzilla.
<li> Changes should not be committed in stable branches without a 
corresponding bug id.  Any change worth pushing into the stable version is 
worth a bug entry.
<li> Never commit new features to a stable branch without permission of the 
PSC or release manager.  Normally only fixes should go into stable branches.
New features go in the main development trunk.
<li> Only bug fixes should be committed to the code during pre-release code 
freeze, without permission from the PSC or release manager.
<li> Significant changes to the main development version should be discussed 
on the gdal-dev list before you make them, and larger changes will require a
 RFC approved by the PSC.
<li> Do not create new branches without the approval of the PSC.  Release 
managers are assumed to have permission to create a branch.
<li> All source code in SVN should be in Unix text format as opposed to 
DOS text mode.
<li> When committing new features or significant changes to existing source 
code, the committer should take reasonable measures to insure that the source 
code continues to build and work on the most commonly supported platforms 
(currently Linux and Windows), either by testing on those platforms directly, 
running buildbot tests, or by getting help from other developers working on 
those platforms. If new files or library dependencies are added, then the 
configure.in, Makefile.in, Makefile.vc and related documentations should be 
kept up to date.
</ul>

\section rfc3_legal Legal 

Commiters are the front line gatekeepers to keep the code base clear of
improperly contributed code.  It is important to the GDAL/OGR users, 
developers and the OSGeo foundation to avoid contributing any code to 
the project without it being clearly licensed under the project license.

Generally speaking the key issues are that those providing code to be
included in the repository understand that the code will be released under
the MIT/X license, and that the person providing the code has the right
to contribute the code.  For the commiter themselves understanding about
the license is hopefully clear.  For other contributors, the commiter
should verify the understanding unless the commiter is very comfortable that
the contributor understands the license (for instance frequent contributors).

If the contribution was developed on behalf of an employer (on work
time, as part of a work project, etc) then it is important that an appropriate
representative of the employer understand that the code will be contributed
under the MIT/X license.  The arrangement should be cleared with an authorized
supervisor/manager, etc.  

The code should be developed by the contributor, or the code should be
from a source which can be rightfully contributed such as from the public
domain, or from an open source project under a compatible license. 

All unusual situations need to be discussed and/or documented. 

Commiters should adhere to the following guidelines, and may be personally
legally liable for improperly contributing code to the source repository:

<ul>
<li> Make sure the contributor (and possibly employer) is aware of the 
contribution terms. 
<li> Code coming from a source other than the contributor (such as adapted
from another project) should be clearly marked as to the original source,
copyright holders, license terms and so forth.  This information can be in
the file headers, but should also be added to the project licensing file 
if not exactly matching normal project licensing (gdal/LICENSE.txt). 
<li> Existing copyright headers and license text should never be stripped
from a file.  If a copyright holder wishes to give up copyright they 
must do so in writing to the foundation before copyright messages are removed.
If license terms are changed it has to be by agreement (written in email is ok)
of the copyright holders. 
<li> When substantial contributions are added to a file (such as substantial 
patches) the author/contributor should be added to the list of copyright
holders for the file. 
<li> If there is uncertainty about whether a change it proper to contribute
to the code base, please seek more information from the project steering
committee, or the foundation legal counsel. 
</ul> 

\section rfc3_bootstraping Bootstraping

The following existing commiters will be considered authorized GDAL/OGR
committers as long as they each review the commiter guidelines, and 
agree to adhere to them.  The SVN administrator will be responsible for 
checking with each person.  

<ul>
<li> Daniel Morissette
<li> Frank Warmerdam
<li> Gillian Walter
<li> Andrey Kiselev
<li> Alessandro Amici
<li> Kor de Jong
<li> Howard Butler
<li> Lichun Wang
<li> Norman Vine
<li> Ken Melero
<li> Kevin Ruland
<li> Marek Brudka
<li> Pirmin Kalberer
<li> Steve Soule
<li> Frans van der Bergh
<li> Denis Nadeau
<li> Oleg Semykin
<li> Julien-Samuel Lacroix
<li> Daniel Wallner
<li> Charles F. I. Savage
<li> Mateusz Loskot
<li> Peter Nagy
<li> Simon Perkins
<li> Radim Blazek
<li> Steve Halasz
<li> Nacho Brodin
<li> Benjamin Collins
<li> Ivan Lucena
<li> Ari Jolma
<li> Tamas Szekeres
</ul>
*/
