Committer Pathway & Community Governance
Overview
The Eclipse SW360 project is an open source community operating under the Eclipse Development Process (EDP). We follow an open, merit-based governance model where any active contributor from any organization can become a Committer or Project Lead.
We warmly welcome and invite contributors, maintainers, and adopters from diverse organizations (such as Siemens, Toshiba, CARIAD, Bosch, and wider open source community members) to participate and take active roles in project stewardship.
Roles in Eclipse SW360
- User / Adopter: Anyone using Eclipse SW360, reporting issues, asking questions, or participating in community meetings.
- Contributor: Anyone who contributes bug reports, pull requests, test cases, code reviews, documentation, or infrastructure improvements.
- Committer: Contributors who have demonstrated sustained, high-quality contributions and have been elected to commit directly, review and merge pull requests, and participate in project decisions.
- Project Lead: Committers elected to lead the overall direction and administrative coordination of the project.
How to Become a Committer
Committer status is earned through sustained merit and commitment to the project. The journey typically follows these steps:
1. Consistent Contributions
Demonstrate sustained engagement across the project repositories (sw360,
sw360-frontend, sw360.website):
- Submit quality pull requests (bug fixes, features, tests, performance improvements).
- Participate constructively in pull request reviews and issue discussions.
- Improve documentation, website content, or developer guides.
- Help other community members on the mailing list (
sw360-dev@eclipse.org) and Slack channel.
2. Eclipse Development Process
This Eclipse Foundation open project is governed by the Eclipse Foundation Development Process and operates under the terms of the Eclipse IP Policy.
Eclipse Contributor Agreement
In order to be able to contribute to Eclipse Foundation projects you must electronically sign the Eclipse Contributor Agreement (ECA).
The ECA provides the Eclipse Foundation with a permanent record that you agree that each of your contributions will comply with the commitments documented in the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). Having an ECA on file associated with the email address matching the “Author” field of your contribution’s Git commits fulfils the DCO’s requirement that you sign-off on your contributions.
For more information, please see the Eclipse Committer Handbook: https://www.eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#resources-commit
3. Nomination and Election
- An existing Committer or Project Lead nominates the candidate based on their track record.
- The nomination highlights the candidate’s technical contributions, code reviews, and community engagement.
- Active Committers cast their votes according to the Eclipse Foundation election rules.
- Upon a successful vote, the Eclipse Management Organization (EMO) approves the election and provisions committer rights.
Committer Responsibilities
As an elected Committer, you are expected to:
- Regularly review and merge incoming community pull requests.
- Ensure all code contributions have proper license headers, ECA sign-offs, and pass CI checks.
- Uphold the Eclipse Foundation Code of Conduct and Intellectual Property rules.
- Participate in project release planning and progress reviews.