The Android Open Source Project has been structured to ensure that:

• The community has full visibility into platform evolution and decision-making.
  
• Contributions are recognized and rewarded.
• Android achieves commercial relevance.

Those within the Android Open Source community play a variety of roles.

Anyone

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 Get source. 

Verifiers

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.

Approvers

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 choose the Approvers, sometimes promoting to this position Verifiers who have demonstrated their expertise within a specific project.

Project Leads

The many projects that make up the Android Open Source Project are described in Project layout. A Project Lead for an individual project is responsible for the following:

• Lead all technical aspects of the project; for example, the project roadmap, development, release cycles, versioning, and QA.
• Work closely with the Core Technical Team (see below) to promote the project and its releases.
  
• Ensure that the project is QA-ed in time for scheduled Android platform releases.
• Designate Verifiers and Approvers for submitted patches.
• Be fair and unbiased while reviewing changes. Accept or reject patches based on technical merit and alignment with the Android platform.
  
• Review changes in a timely manner and make best efforts to communicate when changes are not accepted.
• Optionally maintain a web site for the project for information and documents specific to the project.
  
• Act as a facilitator in resolving technical conflicts.
• Be the public face for the project and the go-to person for questions related to the project.
• Work closely with the Core Technical Team to socialize new project releases.

About new projects....

New projects should be related to Android, be reasonable extensions of the platform, implement drivers and support packages that support Android on specific hardware, and so on.

The Core Technical Team reviews and approves requests for the set up of new projects, designates new projects as part of the core platform, and appoints or confirms the Project Leads for those projects.

To become a Project Lead for a new project, an individual must demonstrate working code that implements the idea for the new project, and must have the ability to act as Project Lead, as the role is defined above.

Core Technical Team

The Core Technical Team is responsible for the following:

• Prepare roadmaps for Android open source releases.
• Resolve cross-module technical issues.
  
• Create and maintain technical policies for the community; for example, coding style guides, release plans, and version plans.
• Approve the set up of new projects and select Project Leads as needed.
• Be the public face for the Android Open Source Project.
• Work closely with the Project Leads to plan project roadmaps and releases.

To become a member of the Core Technical Team, an individual will need to have some combination of these characteristics: 

• A demonstrated knowledge of the end-to-end Android development process.
• Expertise in specific core areas such as build systems, system software, platform security, power management, coding styles, QA, releases, application framework, application development, platform requirements, and long-term roadmaps.
• A history of technical leadership in the above areas.