RFC 1: Project Management Committee Guidelines

Author: Frank Warmerdam

Status: Adopted

Summary

This document describes how the GDAL/OGR Project Management Committee determines membership, and makes decisions on GDAL/OGR project issues.

In brief the committee votes on proposals on gdal-dev. 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

Proposals are written up and submitted on the gdal-dev mailing list for discussion and voting, by any interested party, not just committee members.
Proposals need to be available for review for at least two business days before a final decision can be made.
Respondents may vote "+1" to indicate support for the proposal and a willingness to support implementation.
Respondents may vote "-1" to veto a proposal, but must provide clear reasoning and alternate approaches to resolving the problem within the two days.
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.
Anyone may comment on proposals on the list, but only members of the Project Management Committee's votes will be counted.
A proposal will be accepted if it receives +2 (including the proposer) and no vetos (-1).
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.
Upon completion of discussion and voting the proposer should announce whether they are proceeding (proposal accepted) or are withdrawing their proposal (vetoed).
The Chair gets a vote.
The Chair is responsible for keeping track of who is a member of the Project Management Committee.
Addition and removal of members from the committee, as well as selection of a Chair should be handled as a proposal to the committee. The selection of a new Chair also requires approval of the OSGeo board.
The Chair adjudicates in cases of disputes about voting.

When is Vote Required?

Anything that could cause backward compatibility issues.
Adding substantial amounts of new code.
Changing inter-subsystem APIs, or objects.
Issues of procedure.
When releases should take place.
Anything that might be controversial.

Observations

The Chair is the ultimate adjudicator if things break down.
The absolute majority rule can be used to override an obstructionist veto, but it is intended that in normal circumstances vetoers need to be convinced to withdraw their veto. We are trying to reach consensus.

Bootstrapping

Frank Warmerdam is declared initial Chair of the Project Management Committee.

Daniel Morissette, Frank Warmerdam, Andrey Kiselev and Howard Butler are declared to be the founding Project Management Committee. The current membership list can be found on the プロジェクトステアリング委員会 page.