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Roles and Responsibilities
Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community and without them the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no special requirements. The project asks its users to participate in the project and community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user contributions include (but not limited to):
- Evangelising about the project (e.g. link on a website, word-of-mouth and social media for awareness raising)
- Informing developers of strengths and weaknesses from a new user perspective
- Providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
- Providing financial support (the software is open source, but its developers need to eat)
User who continue to engage with the project and its community will often become more and more involved. Such users may find themselves becoming contributors.
Contributors are community members who contribute in concrete ways to the project. Anyone can become a contributor, and contributions can take many forms. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirement and no selection process. In addition to their actions as users, contributors may also find themselves doing one or more of the following:
- Supporting new users (existing users are often the best people to support new users)
- Reporting bugs
- Identifying requirements
- Providing graphics and web design
- Programming
- Assisting with project infrastructure
- Writing documentations
- Fixing bugs
- Adding features
Contributors engage with the project through the issue tracker and mailing list, or by writing or editing documentations. They submit changes to the project itself via patches (in git lingo pull request), which will be considered for inclusion in the project by existing committers. The developer mailing list is the most appropriate place to ask for help when making that first contribution. As contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, their profile within, and commitment to, the community will increase. At some stage they may find themselves being nominated for commitership.
Committers are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued development of the project through ongoing engagement with the community. Commitership allows contributors to more easily carry on with their project related activities by giving them direct access to the project’s resources. That is, they can make changes directly to project output, without having to submit changes via patches.This does not mean that a committer is free to do what they want. In fact, committers have no more authority over the project than contributors. While commitership indicates a valued member of the community who has demonstrated a healthy respect for the project’s aim and objectives, their work continues to be reviewed by the community before acceptance in an official release. The key difference between a committer and contributor is when this approval is sought by the community. A committer seeks approval after the contribution is made, rather than before. Seeking approval after making a contribution is known as a commit-then-review process. Anyone can become a committer hence there are no special requirements other than to have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the project as a team player. Typically a potential committer will need to show that they have an understanding of the project, its objectives and its strategy.
New committers can be nominated by any existing committer. Once they have been nominated, there will be a vote by the project management committee (PMC). Committer voting is one of the activities that takes place on the project’s private management list. This allow PMC member to freely express their opinions about a nominee without causing embarrassment. The result is then published in the public mailing list. A nominee is entitled to request an explanation of any ‘no votes’ against them, regardless of the outcome of the vote. This explanation is usually provided by the PMC Chair and will be anonymous and constructive in nature.
It is important to recognize that committership is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned it can be removed by the PMC in extreme circumstances. However, under normal circumstances committeeship exists for as long as the committer wishes to continue engaged with the project. A committer who shows an above-average level of contribution to the project, particularly with respect to its strategic direction and long-term health, may be nominated to become a member of the PMC.
The project management committee consists of those individuals identified as ‘project owners’ on the development site. The PMC has additional responsibilities over and above those of a committer. These responsibilities ensure the smooth running of the project. PMC members are expected to review code contributions, participate in strategic planning, approve changes to the governance model and manage the copyright within the project outputs. Members of the PMC do not have significant authority over other members of the community, although it is the PMC that votes on new committers. It also makes decisions when community consensus cannot be reached.
In addition, the PMC has access to the project’s private mailing list and its archives. This list is used for sensitive issues, such as votes for new committers and legal matters that cannot be discussed in public. The private mailing list is never and should not be used for project management or planning. Membership of the PMC is by invitation from an existing PMC member. A nomination will result in discussion and the a vote by the existing PMC members. PMC membership votes are subject to a consensus approval of the current PMC members.
##PMC Chair
The PMC Chair is a single individual, voted by the PMC members. Once someone has been appointed Chair, they remain in that role until they retire, or the PMC casts a two-third majority vote to remove them. The PMC chair has no additional authority over other members of the PMC: the role is one of coordinator and facilitator. The Chair is also expected to ensure that all governance processes are adhered to, and has the casting vote when the project fails to reach consensus.
##Support All participants in the community are encouraged to provide support for new users within the project management infrastructure. This support is provided as a way of growing the community. Those seeking support should recognise that all support activity within the project is voluntary and is therefore provided as and when time allows. A user requiring guaranteed response time or results should therefore seek to purchase a support contract from a community member. However, for those willing to engage with the project on its own terms, and willing to help support other users, the community support channels are ideal.
##Contributing Process
Anyone can contribute to the project, regardless of their skill, as there are many ways to contribute. For instance, a contributor might be active on the project mailing list and issue tracker, or might supply patches. The developer mailing list is the most appropriate place for a contributor to ask for help when making their first contribution.
Decision Making Process Decisions about the future of the project are made through discussion with all members of the community, from the newest user to the most experienced PMC member. All non-sensitive project management decisions take place on the project contributors’ mailing list. Occasionally, sensitive discussions occurs on a private list. In order to ensure that the project is not bogged down by endless discussions and continual voting, the project operates a policy of lazy consensus. This allows the majority of decisions to be made without resorting to a formal vote.
##Lazy Consensus Decision making typically involves the following steps:
- Proposal
- Discussion
- Vote (if consensus is not reached through discussion)
- Decision
Any community member can make a proposal for consideration by the community. In order to initiate a discussion about a new idea, they should send an email to the project contributors’ list or submit a patch implementing the idea to the issue tracker (or version-control system if they have commit access). This will prompt a review and, if necessary, a discussion of the idea. The goal of this review and discussion is to gain approval for the contribution. Since most people in the project community have a shared vision, there is often little need for discussion in order to reach consensus. In general, as long as nobody explicitly opposes a proposal or patch, it is recognized as having the support of the community. This is called lazy consensus - that is, those who have not stated their opinion explicitly have implicitly agreed to the implementation of the proposal. Lazy consensus is a very important concept within projects. It is this process that allows a large group of people to efficiently reach consensus, as someone with no objections to a proposal need not spend time stating their position, and others need not spend time reading such mails. For lazy consensus to be effective, it is necessary to allow at least 72 hours before assuming that there are no objection to the proposal. This requirement ensures that everyone is given enough time to read, digest and respond to the proposal. This time period is chosen so as to be as inclusive as possible of all participants, regardless of their location and time commitments.
##Voting
Not all decisions can be made using lazy consensus. Issues such as those affecting the strategic direction or legal standing of the project must gain explicit approval in the form of a vote. Every member of the community is encouraged to express their opinion in all decisions and all votes. However, only project committers and/or PMC members have binding votes for the purpose of decision making.
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