The KitOps project is dedicated to creating tools that reduce friction in packaging and deploying ML models. This governance document explains how the project is run.
- Values
- Maintainers
- Becoming a Maintainer
- Meetings
- Code of Conduct Enforcement
- Security Response Team
- Voting
- Modifications
The KitOps project leadership embrace the following values:
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Openness: Communication and decision-making happens in the open and is discoverable for future reference. As much as possible, all discussions and work take place in public forums and open repositories.
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Fairness: All stakeholders have the opportunity to provide feedback and submit contributions, which will be considered on their merits.
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Community over Product or Company: Sustaining and growing our community takes priority over shipping code or sponsors' organizational goals. Each contributor participates in the project as an individual.
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Inclusivity: We innovate through different perspectives and skill sets, which can only be accomplished in a welcoming and respectful environment.
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Participation: Responsibilities within the project are earned through participation, and there is a clear path up the contributor ladder into leadership positions.
KitOps maintainers have write access to the project GitHub repository. They can merge patches and are expected to review large or critical patches personally. The current maintainers can be found in MAINTAINERS.md. Maintainers collectively manage the project's resources and contributors.
This privilege is granted with some expectation of responsibility: maintainers are people who care about the KitOps project and want to help it grow and improve. A maintainer is not just someone who can make changes, but someone who has demonstrated good judgement and an ability to collaborate with the team, get the most knowledgeable people to review code and docs, contribute high-quality code, and follow through to fix issues (in code or tests).
A maintainer is a contributor to the project's success and a citizen helping the project succeed.
The collective team of all Maintainers is known as the Maintainer Council, which is the governing body for the project.
To become a Maintainer you need to demonstrate the following:
- Commitment to the project:
- Participate actively and impactfully in discussions, contributions, code and documentation reviews
this will need quantifying eventually - Perform useful reviews for a significant number of non-trivial pull requests
this will need quantifying eventually - Contribute non-trivial pull requests and have them merged
this will need quantifying eventually
- Participate actively and impactfully in discussions, contributions, code and documentation reviews
- Ability to write quality code and/or documentation
- Ability to collaborate with the team
- Understanding of how the team works (policies, processes for testing and code review, etc)
- Understanding of the project's code base and coding and documentation style
A new Maintainer must be proposed by an existing maintainer by sending a message in the #general channel in the KitOps Discord server. A simple majority vote of existing Maintainers approves the application. Maintainers nominations will be evaluated without prejudice to employer or demographics.
Maintainers who are selected will be granted the necessary GitHub rights, and invited to the private Maintainers Discord channel.
Maintainers may resign at any time if they feel that they will not be able to continue fulfilling their project duties.
Maintainers may also be removed after being inactive, failure to fulfill their Maintainer responsibilities, violating the Code of Conduct, or other reasons. Inactivity is defined as a period of very low or no activity in the project for a year or more, with no definite schedule to return to full Maintainer activity.
A Maintainer may be removed at any time by a 2/3 vote of the remaining maintainers.
Depending on the reason for removal, a Maintainer may be converted to Emeritus status. Emeritus Maintainers will still be consulted on some project matters, and can be rapidly returned to Maintainer status if their availability changes.
Time zones permitting, Maintainers are expected to participate in the KitOps office hours virtual meeting, which occurs bi-weekly on Wednesday at 13:30ET / 10:30PT:
Wednesdays @ 13:30 – 14:00 Time zone: America/Toronto Video call link: https://meet.google.com/zfq-uprp-csd Or dial: (CA) +1 647-736-3184 PIN: 144 931 404# More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/zfq-uprp-csd?pin=1283456375953
Maintainers will also have closed meetings in order to discuss security reports or Code of Conduct violations. Such meetings should be scheduled by any Maintainer on receipt of a security issue or CoC report. All current Maintainers must be invited to such closed meetings, except for any Maintainer who is accused of a CoC violation.
Everything we do in the KitOps community is governed by our Code of Conduct. Violations by community members will be discussed and resolved by the Maintainers in their private Discord channel. If a Maintainer is directly involved in the report, the Maintainers will instead designate two Maintainers to resolve the issue.
The Maintainers will appoint a Security Response Team to handle security reports. This committee may simply consist of the Maintainer Council themselves. If this responsibility is delegated, the Maintainers will appoint a team of at least two contributors / Maintainers to handle it. The Maintainers will review who is assigned to this at least once a year.
The Security Response Team is responsible for handling all reports of security holes and breaches according to the security policy.
While most business in KitOps is conducted by "lazy consensus", periodically the Maintainers may need to vote on specific actions or changes. A vote can be taken in the #general channel in the KitOps Discord server or in the private Maintainers channel for security or conduct matters. Votes may also be taken at the bi-weekly KitOps Public Office Hours meeting. Any Maintainer may demand a vote be taken.
Most votes require a simple majority of all Maintainers to succeed, except where otherwise noted. Two-thirds majority votes mean at least two-thirds of all existing maintainers.
Changes to this Governance and its supporting documents may be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Maintainers.