title: “Contribute to Apache Beam” type: “contribute” layout: “arrow_template” aliases:
Apache Beam is an open source project developed and maintained by a friendly community of users, contributors, committers, and project management committee (PMC) members.
Everyone is welcome to join and contribute to the project in multiple ways, not only with code contributions. Contributions like asking questions, reporting bugs, proposing new features, improving documentation, adding to the website, organizing events, or writing blog posts among other contributions, are welcome and recognized.
Here’s a list of things you can do to get started contributing:
If you like contributing to Apache Beam, you are active in the Apache Beam mailing lists, Slack channel, or you attend/organize events, then you are a candidate to become a project committer.
Committers are community members that have write access to the project’s repositories (i.e., they can modify the code, documentation, and website by themselves and also assist with code reviews and accept other contributions).
Even though there is no strict protocol to become a committer, the most important thing we look for is that you display the traits of an Apache Beam committer and that you have been consistently contributing to the project and community.
Candidates for new committers are suggested by current committers or PMC members, and voted upon by the PMC team. So if you would like to become a committer, engage with the community and keep contributing to Apache Beam. You might also want to talk to other committers and ask for their advice and guidance. Feel free to email any committer directly and ask for their advice!
{{< contributor/row_of_traits committer_traits >}}
The PMC is the official managing body of the project as per the Apache Software Foundation governance model: “The Apache Way”. PMC members vote to set Apache Beam’s community and technical direction and are directly responsible for overseeing releases and the healthy development of the community.
PMC members are also responsible for ensuring their project follows certain core requirements set by the board or other corporate officers of the ASF, like following Legal, Branding, and Infrastructure related requirements, along with ensuring their community operates within the ASF Code of Conduct.
Since the PMC members are responsible for establishing the Apache Beam vision and leading our community to work in harmony to achieve it, we look for committed individuals who can perform the responsibilities of the PMC, as well as lead our community to fulfill its vision. This is why we strive to build a diverse PMC that complements skills and expertise sharing the same sets of values.
Ideally, we find candidates among active community members that have shown initiative to shape the direction of Beam and have shown willingness to learn the official processes, such as how to create or verify releases, how to ensure trademark compliance for events, among others. We also expect PMC candidates to be level-headed, constructive, supportive, and willing to “disagree and commit” at times.
A PMC member is also a committer, so if they are not initiated already, they will automatically become committers when joining the PMC. Therefore, the traits of Apache Beam committers also apply to PMC members.