Roles & Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities that people can assume in the SIP Communicator project are based on merit. Everybody can help no matter what their role. Those who have been long term or valuable contributors to the project obtain the right to role and commit directly to the source repository. Java.net offers a list of project roles that specify exactly what access they have to the CVS repository. People associated with the SIP Communicator project fall into one of the following categories:

Users

Users are the people who use the products of the Project. People in this role aren't contributing code, but they are using the products, reporting bugs, making feature requests, and such. This is by far the most important category of people as, without users, there is no reason for the Project. Users may or may not detain the Observer role. The Observer role is promptly granted to anyone that is interested.

When a user starts to contribute code or documentation patches, they become a Contributor.

Contributors

Contributors are the people who write code or documentation patches or contribute positively to the project in other ways. A volunteer's contribution is always recognized. In source code, all volunteers who contribute to a source file may add their name to the list of authors for that file or to the exact line they've contributed to. They are also acknowledged on the contributors page. Contributors detain the Observer role.

Developers

Contributors who give frequent and valuable contributions to the SIP Communicator Project can have their status promoted to that of a "Developer" of the SIP Communicator Project. A Developer has write access to the source code repository.

In order for a Contributor to become a Developer, another Developer can nominate that Contributor or the Contributor can ask for it.

Once a Contributor is nominated, all of the Developers for a subproject will vote. If there are at least 3 positive votes and no negative votes, the Contributor is converted into a Developer and given write access to the source code repository for the SIP Communicator project.

At times, Developers may go inactive for a variety of reasons. A Developer that has been inactive for 6 months or more may (or may not) lose their status as a Developer. Getting access back is as simple as re-requesting it on the project's Developer mailing list.

A list of some of our current Contributors and Developers can be found in our home and contributors pages.



This document has been strongly influenced by Apache's "Get Involved" section<>