page.title=People and Roles
doc.type=source
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<p>The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) includes individuals working in a variety
of roles. As noted in <a href="{@docRoot}about/philosophy.html">Our
Philosophy</a>, the core AOSP members operate the Android product management
and engineering process. This page describes these roles in a bit more
detail.</p>
<p>Anyone who is interested in exploring and contributing to Android can use the
Android Open Source Project resources. Anyone can join the mailing lists, ask
questions, contribute patches, report bugs, look at submitted patches, and use
the tools. To get started with the Android code, see <a
href="{@docRoot}source/index.html">Get Involved</a>.</p>

<h2>Contributor</h2>
<p>A "Contributor" is anyone making contributions to the AOSP source code,
including both employees or other affiliates of an AOSP Member, as well as
external developers who are contributing to Android on their own behalf.
There is no distinction between Contributors who are affiliated with an AOSP
Member, and those who are not: all engineers use the same git/gerrit tools, 
follow the same code review process, and are subject to the same requirements
on code style and so on.</p>
<p/>

<h2>Developer</h2>
<p>A "Developer" is an engineer writing applications that run on Android
devices. There is, of course, no difference in skillset between a "Developer"
and a "Contributor"; we simply use "Developer" to help identify our audience.
Since the key purpose of Android is to cultivate an open development platform,
"Developers" are one of the key customers of the Android project. As such, we
talk about them a lot, though this isn't technically a separate role in the
AOSP <i>per se.</i></p>
<p/>

<h2>Verifier</h2>
<p>"Verifiers" are responsible for testing change requests. After individuals
have submitted a significant amount of high-quality code to the project, the
Project Leads might invite them to become Verifiers.</p><p><i>Note: at this
time, generally Verifiers are the same as Approvers.</i></p>
<p/>

<h2>Approver</h2>
"Approvers" are experienced members of the project who have demonstrated their
design skills and have made significant technical contributions to the
project. In the code-review process, an Approver decides whether to include or
exclude a change. Project Leads (typically employed by an AOSP Member) choose
the Approvers, sometimes promoting to this position Verifiers who have
demonstrated their expertise within a specific project.</p>
<p/>

<h2>Project Leads</h2>
<p>Android consists of a number of sub-projects; you can see these in the git
repository, as individual .git files. The AOSP Members generally assign tech
leads or product leads who oversee the engineering for individual Android
projects. Typically these tech leads will be employees of an AOSP Member
company.  A Project Lead for an individual project is responsible for the
following:</p>
<ul>
  <li>Lead all technical aspects of the project; for example, the project
  roadmap, development, release cycles, versioning, and QA.</li>
  <li>Ensure that the project is QA-ed in time for scheduled Android platform
  releases.</li>
  <li>Designate Verifiers and Approvers for submitted patches.</li>
  <li>Be fair and unbiased while reviewing changes. Accept or reject patches
  based on technical merit and alignment with the Android platform.</li>
  <li>Review changes in a timely manner and make best efforts to communicate
  when changes are not accepted.</li>
  <li>Optionally maintain a web site for the project for information and
  documents specific to the project.</li>
  <li>Act as a facilitator in resolving technical conflicts.</li>
  <li>Be the public face for the project and the go-to person for questions
  related to the project.</li>
</ul>
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