Project Governance
This governance model aims to create an open source community that encourages transparency, contributions, and collaboration, while maintaining sound technical and quality standards.
The project follows a fairly liberal contribution model where people and/or organizations who do the most work have the most influence on project direction. Roles determine decision-making influence, and governing committees (e.g. technical steering, project steering) help ensure the project's direction stays in line with its goals. Technical decisions are primarily made through a "consensus-seeking" approach within the respective committees.
This is a template. Replace the placeholders (committee membership, contacts, repository scope) with details for your own project.
Roles
| Role | Restricted To | Description | Read/Clone | Propose PR | Comment | Triage | Review | Commit | Technical Decisions | Project Decisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| User | None | Anyone using the software to meet an objective. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Contributor | None | Anyone providing input: code, issues, documentation, graphics, etc. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Triager | Contributor | Contributors demonstrating strong familiarity with the project. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Collaborator | Contributor | Contributors granted write access to project repositories. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Technical Steering Committee Member | Collaborator | Collaborators with technical decision-making authority and admin privileges. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Project Steering Committee Member | Stakeholders | Sponsor representatives and key stakeholders guiding the project. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Product Manager | Stakeholders | Overall manager with final authority when consensus cannot be reached. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
User
Anyone who has downloaded, deployed, or operated the software to meet a specific objective.
Contributor
Contributors include anyone that provides input to the project — code, issues, documentation, graphics, designs, or anything else that tangibly improves the project. Start contributing by joining the discussions or submitting an issue.
Triager
A subset of contributors who have demonstrated strong familiarity with the project. Triagers can label issues and pull requests, and comment, close, and reopen them.
Collaborator
A subset of contributors granted write access to one or more project repositories. Both contributors and collaborators can propose changes via pull requests, but only collaborators can formally review and merge them.
Technical Steering Committee (TSC)
A subset of collaborators forms the TSC, which has authority over technical direction, committee governance and process, contribution policy, conduct guidelines, and the list of collaborators.
Project Steering Committee (PSC)
The PSC is made up of sponsor representatives and key stakeholders. It maintains the project roadmap, determines requirements, allocates resources, and handles overall project governance.
Product Manager
Overall manager of the project, with final authority over key decisions when consensus cannot be reached within the TSC or PSC.
Acknowledgements
This governance model was adapted from notable open source projects including node.js, OpenSSL, PostgreSQL, and OpenMCT.