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Simplify the <developers> section#490

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ppkarwasz wants to merge 2 commits into
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fix/developers
Open

Simplify the <developers> section#490
ppkarwasz wants to merge 2 commits into
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fix/developers

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@ppkarwasz

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What

Replace the fixed list of five named PMC members in <developers> with two stable, role-based team entries:

  • Apache Logging Services PMC (dev@logging.apache.org) for general development matters
  • Apache Logging Services Security Team (security@logging.apache.org) as the security contact

Both carry the ASF <organization>, a team/security page URL, and a free-form <role>.

Why

The previous list had the problems any hand-maintained contributor roster has:

  • It is always incomplete. A fixed list inevitably omits contributors, and the choice of who appears is arbitrary. Git history (and, for the ASF, the project team page and projects.apache.org) already track this accurately and automatically.
  • Contact details go stale. People change employers, time zones, and email addresses, and eventually stop working on the project. A POM published inside a release is immutable, so any individual detail is a future inaccuracy.
  • Listing individuals implies a support obligation. People named in the POM are not necessarily willing or able to answer questions about the project. Stable team aliases route questions to whoever is currently active.

The <developers> section is not free to delete, though: Maven Central requires at least one developer with a name and email (see the Central requirements). The two meta-entries satisfy that requirement while pointing at durable, monitored channels instead of individuals.

Who actually consumes this data?

Very little tooling reads <developers> programmatically, which is itself an argument against maintaining a detailed list. The consumers that do matter are served better by this change:

  • Maven Central publishing validation requires the section to be non-empty. Satisfied.
  • maven-project-info-reports-plugin generates team-list.html from this section, but we do not use Maven Site Plugin.
  • SBOM tooling (CycloneDX / SPDX) maps <developers> to SBOM authors and <organization> to manufacturer/supplier, so adding <organization> improves provenance metadata.

Inheritance / downstream impact

<developers> is inherited by child projects. These entries therefore apply to the whole Apache Logging Services family, and child POMs should not override them. A comment in the POM documents this intent.

Replace the fixed list of named PMC members with two role-based team
entries: the PMC (`dev@logging.apache.org`) for development matters and
the Security Team (`security@logging.apache.org`) as the security
contact. Both carry the ASF organization, a team/security page URL, and
a free-form role.

A hand-maintained roster is always incomplete, its contact details go
stale in immutable releases, and naming individuals implies a support
obligation they have not signed up for. Git history and the project team
page already track contributors accurately.

The section cannot be dropped entirely: Maven Central requires at least
one developer with a name and email. The two meta-entries satisfy that
while pointing at durable, monitored channels. `<developers>` is
inherited by child projects, so a comment documents that these entries
should not be overridden downstream.

Assisted-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

@FreeAndNil FreeAndNil left a comment

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LGTM

@garydgregory

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-1 don't change my entry.

@ppkarwasz

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Hi @garydgregory,

-1 don't change my entry.

Fixed in 6fa6bf4.

May I ask why you wish to keep your entry?

@FreeAndNil: are you sure you don't want to add your entry for you contributions?

@FreeAndNil

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@ppkarwasz I am sure.
It's enough to see my name on the team list.

@garydgregory

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There is no need shuffle this around IMO, this feels like some kind of solution in search of a problem, change for the sake of change, for what feels like some overbearing administrative system. We are people writing code after all, that's what should be reflected, not committees.

My recollection of the general history is that developers (committers, PMC members) are in the developers section and that the contributors section was used for non-committers and non-PMC members, for folks that submit patches in Jira, or any other types of contributions. Then changes.xml came along and we started using that, and then, later, we had to invent our own custom changes system that no other project uses, and I have to remind myself how to use.

Enough wasting time writing about this...

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3 participants