MapFish Project Steering Committee Process

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Detailed Process
  3. When is a Vote Required?
  4. Issues Requiring Unanimous Approval
  5. Membership Expectations
  6. PSC Formation Process

Summary

This document describes how the MapFish Project Steering Committee determines its membership, and makes decisions on MapFish project issues.

The process described in this document is based on OpenLayers', GDAL's and MapServer's PSC processes.

In brief, the committee votes on proposals on the MapFish dev mailing list. Proposals are available for review for at least two days, and a single veto is sufficient to delay progress though ultimately a majority of members can pass a proposal.

Detailed Process

  1. Proposals are written up and submitted on the MapFish dev mailing list for discussion and voting, by any interested party, not just committee members.
  2. Proposals need to be available for review for at least two business days before a final decision can be made.
  3. Respondents may vote "+1" to indicate support for the proposal and a willingness to support implementation.
  4. Respondents may vote "-1" to veto a proposal, but must provide clear reasoning and alternate approaches to resolving the problem within the two days.
  5. A vote of -0 indicates mild disagreement, but has no effect. A 0 indicates no opinion. A +0 indicate mild support, but has no effect.
  6. Anyone may comment on proposals on the list, but only members of the Project Steering Committee's votes will be counted.
  7. A proposal will be accepted if it receives +2 (including the proposer) and no vetos (-1), except in the case where the issue requires unanimous approval (see the "Issues Requiring Unanimous Approval" section below).
  8. If a proposal is vetoed, and it cannot be revised to satisfy all parties, then it can be resubmitted for an override vote in which a majority of all eligible voters indicating +1 is sufficient to pass it. Note that this is a majority of all committee members, not just those who actively vote.
  9. Upon completion of discussion and voting the proposer should announce whether they are proceeding (proposal accepted) or are withdrawing their proposal (vetoed).
  10. The Committee Chair is responsible for facilitating discussion of proposals, and is responsible for keeping track of who is a member of the Project Steering Committee.
  11. Addition and removal of members from the committee, as well as selection of a Chair should be handled as a proposal to the committee.
  12. The Chair adjudicates in cases of disputes about voting.

When is a Vote Required?

  • Before any changes that could cause backward compatibility issues or changes the published API.
  • Before adding substantial amounts of new code or documentation.
  • Issues of procedure.
  • When releases should take place.
  • Anything that might be controversial.

Issues Requiring Unanimous Approval

The following list are issues for which all committee members must indicate +1 for the proposal to pass :

  • Changing the License for the project or repositories

Membership Expectations

  • Committee members are expected to take an active role in the development (broadly speaking) of the project.
  • Committee members are expected to participate in pre-scheduled IRC meetings.
  • Committee members are expected to be active on the mailing lists.
  • Committee members are expected to vote on proposals and issues in a timely manner.

PSC Formation Process

The formation of the initial PSC will occur as a result of a three-phase process:

  1. the MapFish community, i.e. people on the @dev and @users mailing lists, are invited to nominate PSC member candidates. People publicly nominate candidates by writing names on the Nomination Wiki Page, they can write as many names as they want, given these names are not yet listed in the page. The nomination period lasts 5 business days, from the 7th to the 11th of december.
  1. the MapFish community votes for up to 5 candidates. People vote by sending up to 5 names to Gary Shermam (gsherman --AT-- mrcc --DOT-- com), who is responsible for tallying the votes. The voting period lasts 5 business days, from the 14th to the 18th of december.
  1. the elected board of 5 members can nominate 2 other members, if they deem it necessary. They will also select a chair, and bring this as a Proposal to the @dev mailing list (as described in the Detailed Process section above)

Constraints on the PSC membership:

  • The number of PSC members must always be odd (this means that, during phase 3, the 5 elected members cannot nominate one new member only).
  • No more than 45 % of the PSC comes from a single organization (examples: 2/5, 3/7 and 4/9 are possible)