[ogb-discuss] Community Group Guidelines, v0.2

[Glynn Foster]

Hey,

Here's an update to the community group guidelines. Some of the changes I've
included in this draft are -

  o Brief details of Community Group Creation
  o Added more formal voting procedures laid out in
    the constitution
  o s/-code/-notify for notification aliases for code commits
  o More detail about why private mailing lists might be required
  o Code review, cr.opensolaris.org

During these updates, I'm inclining to move towards a more generic FAQ on many
of these items instead, ala

  http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=10442


Thoughts, comments all welcome.

Glynn


==

Guidelines for Community Groups, v0.2

1) Introduction

   Under the terms of the constitution, Community Groups have been set up
   to self-govern their own interests and activities, particularly around
   initiating and managing projects to accomplish those activies.

   1.1) Community Group Creation

        Community Group creation is set out in Article VII of the
        constitution. In practice, a proposed Community Group should
        ideally not have conflicting goals with an existing one (though
        exceptions can be made to this rule).

        While the creation of Community Groups come with an added
        degree of responsibility in providing official voting rights, it
        may be appropriate to initially get an existing Community Group
        to endorse a Project instead, and work towards building and
        migrating to an official Community Group at a later stage.

2) Recommendations

   While Community Groups may self-govern how they see fit, the following
   are a set of recommendations for the day to day running of such a group.

   2.1) Grant Updates

        In Article III, Section 3.3 of the constitution, a set of roles
        are mapped out for involvement in OpenSolaris. Among the roles
        to note for Community Groups are 'Contributors' and 'Core
        Contributors'.

        It is up to the Community Group to determine a process for recognizing
        their community involvement.

        For example, a Community Group may decide that three or more +1's
        are required from Core Contributors to update an individual to either
        'Contributor' or 'Core Contributor' status. More formal voting
        procedures are detailed in Article VIII, Section 8.3 and 8.4 of
        the constitution.

        When a Community Group has decided on this, a facilitator must
        acknowledge these status updates to ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org where
        the current OGB secretary can record them.

        All Core Contributors should be strongly encouraged to be active,
        and enthusiastic members of the Community Group, and help to grow
        their respective communities through good communication and
        mentoring. They should be subscribed to the relevant -discuss
        mailing lists, and actively following the discussion.

   2.2) Mailing Lists

        A Community Group may request a mailing list for their needs as
        appropriate. Mailing list names should give some indication of
        their purpose, and have one of the following set of suffixes:

          -dev:     Developer dsicussion related to the topic
          -discuss: General discussion related to the topic
          -notify:  Notification alias for code putbacks related
                    to the topic

        It is up to the Community Group to decide whether a new project
        warrants a new mailing list, or whether an existing mailing list
        could serve that purpose. It may not neccessarily be the best
        decision to split discussion off into a separate forum if there
        is too little traffic being generated.

        Private mailing lists may be desired if particularly sensitive
        issues need to be discussed by a given Community Group, however
        they should be rarely needed and often prove harmful to the
        community. It is up to the Community Group to determine whether
        a private mailing list is required, and what the process is
        for approving that request.

        To request a new mailing list, or changes to existing ones, a
        facilitator of the Community Group should mail
        website-discuss at opensolaris.org with details of their request.

   2.3) Web Page Maintenance

        Community Group and Project web pages can be currently edited
        by designated leaders as listed in the 'Leaders' sections. This
        does not correspond to membership status ('Contributor' or
        'Core Contributor') of OpenSolaris.

        It is up to the current set of designated leaders to make that
        call to add additional people to maintain the web pages in
        question, and this can be done by using the web application
        as detailed in

        http://www.opensolaris.org/os/communities/lead_reference/

   2.4) Project Creation

        Project creation is dependant on the endorsement of a Community
        Group as detailed in

        http://opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/policies/project-instantiation.txt

        Essentially this means that contributors within a Community Group
        may ask for endorsement by the Core Contributors of that Community
        Group. It is up to the Community Group to decide on their guidelines
        for what may be an acceptable process to determine whether a project
        gets endorsement.

        For example, a Community Group may decide that three or more +1's
        are required from Core Contributors within that community before
        a project is endorsed.

        When a project has officially been endorsed by a Community Group,
        a facilitator must acknowledge that endorsement to
        ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org.

        During this time, the project may be granted web hosting facilities
        (web pages, mailing lists and source code repositories) by mailing
        website-discuss at opensolaris.org with the following information

            - Project Name, ascii only
                eg. nwam
                    (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/nwam)

            - Project Title, single line title
                eg. "Network Auto-Magic"

            - Project Description, short description
                eg. "A project for simplifying and automating network
                     configuration on Solaris"

        A mailing list may also be created using the guidelines detailed in
        section 2.2) Mailing Lists.

   2.4) Community Group Decisions

        It is the responsibility of the Community Groups to come to a set
        of decisions during their day to day activities and interests. This
        can be done by an informal consensus, or more formal vote. All
        Community Groups, and in particular Core Contributors should be
        encouraged to act responsibly and with the agreement of the
        community. While formal votes help to bring a decision to a precise
        conclusion, they may also alienate those who do not have a vote.
        Formal voting procedures are detailed in Article VIII, Section 8.3
        and 8.4 of the constitution.

   2.5) Code Review

        A code review site is available for contributors to post code changes
        and have them reviewed by peer contributors

          http://cr.opensolaris.org/

        Access to this site is allowed for all participants of a Community
        Group with a 'Contributor' or 'Core Contributor' grant status. If a
        contributor is looking to post a review, they should contact their
        sponsoring Community Group and request 'Contributor' grant status
        as detailed in section 2.1) Grant Updates.

3) Feedback

   If you have any comments on these guidelines, or would like to see the
   guidelines address something that isn't covered, please email
   ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org with feedback.