A project model for the FreeBSD Project
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5.2. Official Hats

The official hats in the FreeBSD Project are hats that are more or less formalised and mainly administrative roles. They have the authority and responsibility for their area. The following illustration shows the responsibility lines. After this follows a description of each hat, including who it is held by.

Figure 5-1. Overview of official hats

All boxes consist of groups of committers, except for the dotted boxes where the holders are not necessarily committers. The flattened circles are sub-projects and consist of both committers and non-committers of the main project.

5.2.1. Documentation project manager

The FreeBSD Documentation Project architect is responsible for defining and following up documentation goals for the committers in the Documentation project.

Hat held by: The DocEng team <[email protected]>. The DocEng Charter.

5.2.2. CVSup Mirror Site Coordinator

The CVSup Mirror Site Coordinator coordinates all the CVSup Mirror Site Admins to ensure that they are distributing current versions of the software, that they have the capacity to update themselves when major updates are in progress, and making it easy for the general public to find their closest CVSup mirror.

Hat currently held by: The CVSup-master team <[email protected]>.

5.2.3. Internationalisation

The Internationalisation hat is responsible for coordinating the localisation efforts of the FreeBSD kernel and userland utilities. The translation effort are coordinated by The FreeBSD Documentation Project. The Internationalisation hat should suggest and promote standards and guidelines for writing and maintaining the software in a fashion that makes it easier to translate.

Hat currently available.

5.2.4. Postmaster

The Postmaster is responsible for mail being correctly delivered to the committers' email address. He is also responsible for ensuring that the mailing lists work and should take measures against possible disruptions of mail such as having troll-, spam- and virus-filters.

Hat currently held by: David Wolfskill <[email protected]>.

5.2.5. Quality Assurance

The responsibilities of this role are to manage the quality assurance measures.

Hat currently held by: Robert Watson <[email protected]>.

5.2.6. Release Coordination

The responsibilities of the Release Engineering Team are

Setting, publishing and following a release schedule for official releases
Documenting and formalising release engineering procedures
Creation and maintenance of code branches
Coordinating with the Ports and Documentation teams to have an updated set of packages and documentation released with the new releases
Coordinating with the Security team so that pending releases are not affected by recently disclosed vulnerabilities.

Further information about the development process is available in the release engineering section.

Hat held by: the Release Engineering team <[email protected]>. The current Release Engineer is Ken Smith <[email protected]>. The Release Engineering Charter.

5.2.7. Public Relations & Corporate Liaison

The Public Relations & Corporate Liaison's responsibilities are:

Making press statements when happenings that are important to the FreeBSD Project happen.
Being the official contact person for corporations that are working close with the FreeBSD Project.
Take steps to promote FreeBSD within both the Open Source community and the corporate world.
Handle the “freebsd-advocacy” mailing list.

This hat is currently not occupied.

5.2.8. Security Officer

The Security Officer's main responsibility is to coordinate information exchange with others in the security community and in the FreeBSD project. The Security Officer is also responsible for taking action when security problems are reported and promoting proactive development behaviour when it comes to security.

Because of the fear that information about vulnerabilities may leak out to people with malicious intent before a patch is available, only the Security Officer, consisting of an officer, a deputy and two Core team members, receive sensitive information about security issues. However, to create or implement a patch, the Security Officer has the Security Officer Team <[email protected]> to help do the work.

Hat held by: the Security Officer <[email protected]>, currently headed by Colin Percival <[email protected]>. The Security Officer and The Security Officer Team's charter.

5.2.9. Source Repository Manager

The Source Repository Manager is the only one who is allowed to directly modify the repository without using the CVS tool. It is his/her responsibility to ensure that technical problems that arise in the repository are resolved quickly. The source repository manager has the authority to back out commits if this is necessary to resolve a CVS technical problem.

Hat held by: the Source Repository Manager <[email protected]>, currently headed by Peter Wemm <[email protected]>.

5.2.10. Election Manager

The Election Manager is responsible for the Core election process. The manager is responsible for running and maintaining the election system, and is the final authority should minor unforseen events happen in the election process. Major unforseen events have to be discussed with the Core team

Hat held only during elections.

5.2.11. Web site Management

The Web site Management hat is responsible for coordinating the rollout of updated web pages on mirrors around the world, for the overall structure of the primary web site and the system it is running upon. The management needs to coordinate the content with The FreeBSD Documentation Project and acts as maintainer for the “www” tree.

Hat held by: the FreeBSD Webmasters <[email protected]>.

5.2.12. Ports Manager

The Ports Manager acts as a liaison between The Ports Subproject and the core project, and all requests from the project should go to the ports manager.

Hat held by: the Ports Management Team <[email protected]>. The Portmgr charter.

5.2.13. Standards

The Standards hat is responsible for ensuring that FreeBSD complies with the standards it is committed to , keeping up to date on the development of these standards and notifying FreeBSD developers of important changes that allows them to take a proactive role and decrease the time between a standards update and FreeBSD's compliancy.

Hat currently held by: Garrett Wollman <[email protected]>.

Hat held by: the Admin team <[email protected]>, currently headed by Mark Murray <[email protected]>