Costin Manolache wrote:

not strictly true, although mostly. a product release may be effectively vetoed by the asf officer with oversight of the project, if it appears in that person's judgement that releasing it would be the Wrong Thing for the foundation. in that case, it doesn't matter what the majority think, since the product is an *asf* product and not just theirs, although they certainly have the privilege of and responsibility to try to convince the officer (pmc chair) of the Rightness of the view to release.

in a healthy and smoothly-communicating community that should never happen; any such horribly blocking issue should have been raised and a reasonable solution or compromise developed. in fact, this hasn't happened afaik, and i hope it never does -- but everyone should be aware that this is one of the aspects of people working on code owned in common by the foundation proper: the foundation has the final say about it. the interests of the foundation are represented by the asf officer overseeing the project, who is almost certainly going to support the majority -- except when doing so would damage the foundation's interests.

this is all imo, and certainly others may disagree with me.