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The Jikes™ RVM project is a collaborative software development project dedicated to providing an open source state-of-the-art infrastructure, freely available for performing research on virtual machine technologies for the Java™ programming language. This document describes the composition of the project and the roles and responsibilities of the participants.

Roles in the Jikes RVM Project

There are various roles people play in the Jikes RVM project. The more you contribute, and the higher the quality of your contribution, the more responsibility you can obtain.

User

Users are the people who use Jikes RVM, without contributing code or documentation to the project. Users are encouraged to participate through the mailing lists, asking questions, providing suggestions, and helping other users. Users are also encouraged to report problems using the bug tracking system. Anyone can be a user.

Contributor

A user who contributes code or documentation becomes a contributor. Contributors are the people who contribute enhancements, bug fixes, documentation, or other work that is incorporated into the system. Anyone can be a contributor.

Project Member

Project members are users or contributors who are also members of the Jikes RVM sourceforge project. Project members do not have write access to the svn repository. However, project members can be given "technician" access to one or more of the project trackers so they are able to accept and process tracker items (for example, bug reports or feature requests).

If you are interested in becoming a project member, you should contact a core team members and indicate in what role(s) you want to contribute to the project. A contributor or user can become a project member by the following sequential process:

  1. they contact a core team member and explain what role they want to fulfill in the project (and thus what privileges they need)
  2. at least 3 other core team members support their addition as project member, and
  3. the Jikes RVM Steering Committee approves the addition by majority vote

Core Team Member

A contributor or project member who gives frequent and valuable contributions can be promoted to a core team member. Core team members have write access to the source code repository, and voting rights allowing them to affect the future of the project. The members of the core team are responsible for virtually all of the day-to-day technical decisions associated with the project. They are the gatekeepers, deciding what new code is added to the system. All contributions will be processed by one or more core team members before potential inclusion into the svn repository.

A contributor or project member can become a core team member by the following sequential process:

  1. they are nominated by an existing core team member,
  2. at least 3 other core team members support their nomination, and
  3. the Jikes RVM Steering Committee approves the nomination by majority vote

Becoming a core team member is a privilege that is earned by contributing and showing good judgment. It is a responsibility that should be neither given nor taken lightly. Active participation on the mailing lists is a responsibility of all core team members, and is critical to the success of the project. Core team members are responsible for proactively reporting problems in the bug tracking system, and annotating problem reports with status information, explanations, clarifications, or requests for more information from the submitter. The core team also ensures that nightly regression tests are run on all supported platforms, monitors the results of the tests, and opens defects to track regression test failures. A subset of the core team does most of this monitoring, however all core team members are expected to investigate regression test failures that might have been caused by a source code change they committed.

At times, core team members may go inactive for a variety of reasons. The project relies on active core team members who respond to discussions in a constructive and timely manner. A core team member that is disruptive, does not participate actively, or has been inactive for an extended period may have his or her commit status removed by the Jikes RVM Steering Committee.

Current Core Team Members

The Jikes RVM project currently contains two subprojects, each with its own core team. Individuals are often members of more than one of the subprojects. Members of the Jikes RVM steering committee are members ex officio of all subproject core teams (in the tables below, steering committee members are only listed on projects where they actively participate as core team members).

Jikes RVM Core Team
MMTk Core Team

Steering Committee

The Jikes RVM Steering Committee (SC) is a small group that is responsible for the strategic direction and success of the project. This governing and advisory body is expected to ensure the project's welfare and guide its overall direction.

The initial Jikes RVM SC was selected by the core team. Thereafter, to become a member of the SC, an individual must be nominated by a member of the SC, and unanimously approved by all SC members. The goal is to keep the membership of the SC very small. In the unlikely event that a member of the SC becomes disruptive to the process or ceases to contribute for an extended period, the member may be removed by unanimous vote of remaining SC members.

Current Steering Committee