About OpenDarwin Accounts

There are only two reasons to apply for an OpenDarwin Account. The most common reason is to apply for an account is to join an existing project to become a CVS committer. If you fall into this category, you should contact the project admins of the project you would like to join, and make sure they have some context for your application. As a project admin, we can get many applications without any background. If the project admin is expecting your application, it is likely to be approved with much less confusion. The other reason to apply for a new OpenDarwin account is to create a new project to be hosted by OpenDarwin. If you fall into this category, you should contact core@ to give them a heads up on the project application. Here are some things to keep in mind when deciding if you need an account:

Mailing lists

No account is needed to participate in the mailing list. You can subscribe by providing your e-mail address.

Bug Tracking

Bugzilla maintains its own database of accounts, and to make things easy, we've started with using separate accounts for Bugzilla and CVS. This means that you'll need to set up two separate accounts for these services. You create your Bugzilla account here. Over time, we hope to have just a single account that gives you access to CVS and to Bugzilla. Having a Bugzilla account is mandatory in order to get a CVS account.

CVS

CVS checkout does not require an account. Anyone can check out sources via anoncvs. CVS check-in, and all other project privileges require a CVS account.

You can request a CVS account here, and you will need to list a "mentor". A mentor is someone who already has a CVS account, and who can vouch for your ability and responsibility regarding project source maintenance. The CVS account request is then reviewed by a core team member. Initially, this will be a small set of people for the entire site. Over time, as projects and project owners are added, the project owners will be able to approve CVS accounts.

Creating a Project

If you would like to have OpenDarwin host your project, here are some guidelines for the types of projects OpenDarwin hosts:

Virtually any project that relates to Darwin or OS X is welcome at OpenDarwin.
We do not like to fork projects. If you're looking at creating a Mac OS X specific version of an existing project, you should try to work with the project maintainers rather than creating a separate branch.

If you are unsure whether a project should be hosted by OpenDarwin, feel free to send mail to core@ and ask. We are generally open to most projects that people are actually going to work on. We don't really want to host a bunch of projects that no one ever commits any code to.

Existing Users Joining a Project

If you already have an OpenDarwin account, and would like to join another OpenDarwin project, you should contact the project admins of the project you would like to join. If you give the project admins your OpenDarwin username, they can add you to the project. There is no separate form to apply to projects. You should contact the project admins directly.

Updating your profile

Once you have a CVS account, you can change your password or other information via this page.

Project Admins

When someone applies for an OpenDarwin account, and wants to apply to your project, you should recieve a notification email letting you know. Once you recieve the notification mail, you can go to the Project Admin page and view outstanding requests. There, you can approve or reject the applications. From this page, you can also add people with existing OpenDarwin accounts to your project. You can also add other project admins, to help manage your project.

Account Approval Policies

First, core@ can approve or reject any request.
When a new user applies for an OpenDarwin account and they have applied to an existing project, the project admins can approve or reject the request. When the request is approved, the user's account is created and they become a member of that project. This removes core@ from the picture. In the past, people had to apply for a new account, which went to core@. Once core@ approved the account, then they could apply to a project, which required project admin approval. This was problematic because frequently core@ would not have any background information for the account applications. Now the requests should be going to the people that have the most information to be able to approve the request.