Early and Often

This program is a work in progress and will evolve over time. We don't have everything implemented yet but rather than try to define everything up front and implement it in one "big bang", it is being rolled out slowly and the community process can work out the details.

The intention is that it should become something that the community owns. All comments and ideas are welcome.

The purpose of the Pentaho Active Contributor (PAC) program is to recognize and reward people that spend a lot of their time and resources contributing to the Pentaho projects or the Pentaho community. It is also intended to be an incentive for people to become more active participants.

Criteria

This is the most difficult part of defining the PAC program. We don't want to create a list of requirements or rules that must be met before being recognized. People contribute in different ways and it would be impossible to account for all situations. We also don't want people "gaming" the system by looking for loopholes and fulfilling some set of minimum requirements.

For the start of the program: Candidates will be recommended by one of the Project Architects or the Community Guy. They should have been active in the community or contributing continuously for least six months and be willing to take on added responsibilities like forum moderation, documentation maintenance etc.

After the initial start up, the PACs should have a role in determining how people are selected and what they have to do to keep the active contributor status.

Benefits

They are all optional, members can remain anonymous if they so choose.

Forum recognition Special icon next to the signature or user name. In Work
Logo Use of the "pentaho Active Contributor" logo identifying the member as an Active Contributor to the Pentaho project. It can be used on a web site or resume and we will provide a means for people to verify that the logo user is in fact a PAC. Logo is complete, the means of verification is still in progress
EE Forums The Enterprise Edition forums provide direct access to Pentaho developers. It is only available to Customers, Partners and PACs. Available
Enterprise Edition software Limited use of the EE software for members or their company while they are active in the program. Available after EE 2.0 is GA
Advanced Documentation Access to advanced documentation for members while they are active in the program. Available after EE 2.0 is GA

FAQ

What kinds of contributions

There are many ways to contribute to open source projects:

Forum Moderation
Answer forum questions
Maintain documentation
Write tech tips or articles
Submit bug reports
Participate in testing
Fix bugs
Write new components or features
BLOG about Pentaho

For more ideas, see the How to Contribute page.

Will this fragment or alienate some the community?

The intention is to create and support new community leaders and reduce Pentaho's role in the community. We hope it will inspire more community people to participate and be incentive for the 80% that only ask questions and never answer them.

What are the conditions for use of the EE software?

The EE software use is restricted to either personal use for the PAC member or 1 production instance for their current employer. If the PAC member changes jobs, the benefit stays with the individual not the previous employer. Technical support, indemnification, services and training are NOT included.

What is the purpose of the EE forums? Are you trying to keep the knowledge out of the open source community?

The EE forums are designed to give Pentaho customers and partners direct access to the Pentaho developers. The devs have limited bandwidth and answer questions in the EE forums first and without a waiting period. We want to give the Active Contributors this same access to the devs and hope they become the experts and bring knowledge to the community forums.

I think I've been very active in the community. Why haven't I been recommended?

If you have been regularly contributing code, translations or answering dozens of forum posts every week and haven't been recognized, let us know. Send an email to CommunityConnection@pentaho.org and we will find the answer.

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