Kepler Management: Voting, Trial Accounts, and CVS Commit Privileges

STATUS

The content on this page is outdated. The page is archived for reference only. For more information about current work, please contact the Management Team.

 

Overview

The management of this collaboration is intended to be lightweight but still allow the resolution of any conflicts that might arise. Most of the time we expect strong agreement on design and development issues. In the event of an issue that requires a more formal procedure, we propose to follow the model used in the Apache Software foundation. In this model, project members are appointed through a vote of the existing members.

Voting

Project membership entitles the individual to one vote in any future issue that arises as well as write access to the projects files (e.g., in cvs). Votes are conducted on a project mailing list that will be established by project members. Each member's vote on an issue can be one of three values:

 

• Approve (+1)
• Neutral (0)
• Disapprove (-1)

Issues are decided on a majority basis, where if a majority of Approve votes are received, and no Disapprove votes are received, the issue passes. For most issues, members will either vote Approve or Neutral. Disapprove is used to veto the passage of a proposal, and obligates the person casting the Disapprove vote to justify their vote AND to propose alternative solutions that can be discussed. The disapprove vote is intended to prevent blind rule-by-majority decision-making in cases where members have strong technical grounds for disagreeing with an approach or proposal.

Issues that might be fodder for voting include, but are not limited to the following:

• appointment of new members
• design decisions that affect the overall software infrastructure
• software release dates and content
• software development commits

 

CVS commit privileges

Project members automatically have write access to the CVS repository.

 

Trial accounts

Members can nominate another person to have a trial account for a period of 6 months. During this period the trial member will be given commit privileges to the CVS repository to make it easier to make contributions to the project, but does not have voting privileges. The sponsoring member must be sure that all contributions made by the trial account holder conform to the spirit and progress of the Kepler project and do not hinder other Kepler development, including possibly reviewing contributions before they are made. The sponsor is responsible for everything that is committed using the trial account. Before the six months have elapsed, and after the trial account holder has made significant contributions to Kepler, the sponsoring member can propose that they be voted in as a full member. The proposal should include a summary of the contributions that the trial account member has made to the project. If the trial account holder has not become a full member within 6 months, their CVS commit privileges will be removed.