PreCentral: Open webOS governance model modeled after the Apache Way

News Reporter · February 14, 2012

webOS

Today saw the release of

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from the . Also on the roadmap for this month was the governance structure HP intended to implement for the open source project, and as we had anticipated and hoped, HP has adopted a model based on "the Apache Way."

In essence, the Apache model the same basis of the ethos behind WebOS Internals. HP's take on the model will be such that anybody is allowed to submit code to the project (which itself will be segmented into multiple sub-projects), with each sub-project overseen by a Project Management Committee "comprised of committers elected from within the project's community." This PMC will also be responsible for their project's release strategy and distributions.

There will also be a board and corporate officers to guide the PMCs, though they are still "expected to act individually." The PMCs will also be expected to guide their projects to meet the core criteria from HP and follow the "legal, branding, and infrastructure related requirements" of the Open webOS project. So it won't be a complete free-for-all.

To start the committers that comprise the PMCs will be appointed from HP - you've got to start somewhere. From there the PMCs will "use a system of meritocracy as a guide for adding contributors" to the project. The level and quality of your involvement will dictate the views of your contributions, which could see you move from a layperson contributor to the mighty level of committer. Doer to decider.

The Open webOS board will be announced in April, but in the meantime HP has set forth the leaders of each PMC. webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt will be the Overall Project Owner (no surprise there), Manish Patil will lead Open webOS, Matt McNulty will be in charge of (no surprise there either), Leonid Zolotarev is the lead for webOS WekKit, the Kerenl and System Manager lead has yet to be announced, and we're proud to say that WebOS Internals chief Rod Whitby will be leading the Community Development side of Open webOS (which he probably would have done anyway).

Press release after the break.

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