Governance

webhint is an open source project that depends on contributions from the community. Anyone may contribute to the project at any time by submitting code, participating in discussions, making suggestions, or any other contribution they see fit. This document describes how various types of contributors work within the webhint project.

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Users are community members who have a need for the project. Anyone can be a User; there are no special requirements. Common User contributions include evangelizing the project (e.g., display a link on a website and raise awareness through word-of-mouth), informing developers of strengths and weaknesses from a new user perspective, or providing moral support (a “thank you” goes a long way).

Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often become more and more involved. Such Users may find themselves becoming Contributors, as described in the next section.

Contributors

Contributors are community members who contribute in concrete ways to the project, most often in the form of code and/or documentation. Anyone can become a Contributor, and contributions can take many forms. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements, and no selection process.

Contributors have read-only access to source code and so submit changes via pull requests. Contributor pull requests have their contribution reviewed and merged by a TSC member. TSC members and Committers work with Contributors to review their code and prepare it for merging.

As Contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, their profile within, and commitment to, the community will increase. At some stage, they may find themselves being nominated for committership by an existing Committer.

Committers

Committers are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued development of the project through ongoing engagement with the community. Committers are given push access to the project’s GitHub repos and must abide by the project’s Contribution Guidelines.

Committers:

Are expected to work on public branches of their forks and submit pull requests to the main branch.
Must submit pull requests for all changes.
Have their work reviewed by TSC members before acceptance into the repository.
May label and close issues.
May merge some pull requests.

To become a Committer:

One must have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the project as a team player. Typically, a potential Committer will need to show that they have an understanding of and alignment with the project, its objectives, and its strategy.
Committers are expected to be respectful of every community member and to work collaboratively in the spirit of inclusion.
Have submitted a significant amount of qualifying pull requests. What’s a qualifying pull request? One that carries significant technical weight and requires little effort to accept because it’s well documented and tested.

New Committers can be nominated by any existing Committer. Once they have been nominated, there will be a vote by the TSC members.

It is important to recognize that committership is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned it can be removed by the TSC members by a standard TSC motion. However, under normal circumstances committership exists for as long as the Committer wishes to continue engaging with the project.

A Committer who shows an above-average level of contribution to the project, particularly with respect to its strategic direction and long-term health, may be nominated to become a TSC member, described below.

Technical Steering Committee (TSC)

The webhint project is jointly governed by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) which is responsible for high-level guidance of the project.

The TSC has final authority over this project including:

Technical direction of the project as well as hint guidance.
Project governance and process (including this policy).
Contribution policy.
GitHub repository hosting.

TSC seats are not time-limited. There is no fixed size of the TSC. The TSC should be of such a size as to ensure adequate coverage of important areas of expertise balanced with the ability to make decisions efficiently.

The TSC may add additional members to the TSC by a standard TSC motion.

A TSC member may be removed from the TSC by voluntary resignation, or by a standard TSC motion.

Changes to TSC membership should be posted in the agenda, and may be suggested as any other agenda item (see “TSC Meetings” below).

No more than 1/3 of the TSC members may be affiliated with the same employer. If removal or resignation of a TSC member, or a change of employment by a TSC member, creates a situation where more than 1/3 of the TSC membership shares an employer, then the situation must be immediately remedied by the resignation or removal of one or more TSC members affiliated with the over-represented employer(s) or the addition of a new representative not affiliated with the over-represented employer(s). The exception to this is when there are not enough members (e.g.: 2 people will be 50%).

TSC members have additional responsibilities over and above those of a Committer. These responsibilities ensure the smooth running of the project. TSC members are expected to review code contributions, approve changes to this document, manage the copyrights within the project outputs, and participate in the TSC discussions and meetings.

TSC members fulfill all requirements of Committers, and also:

May merge external pull requests for accepted issues upon reviewing and approving the changes.
May merge their own pull requests once they have collected the feedback they deem necessary. (No pull request should be merged without at least one Committer/TSC member comment stating they’ve looked at the code.)

To become a TSC member one most fulfill at least 2 of the following items and commit to being a part of the community for the long-term.

Work in a helpful and collaborative way with the webhint and/or web communities.
Have given good feedback on others’ submissions and displayed an overall understanding of the code quality standards for the project.
Be an expert in a web related area, e.g.: browser internals, accessibility, security, performance, etc.

An individual is invited to become a TSC member by existing TSC members. A nomination will result in discussion and then a decision by the TSC.

Meetings

The webhint team tries to meet every 2 weeks (length of a sprint) on Zoom, and to stream the meeting on YouTube.

The intention of the agenda is to summarize the work done during the last period, and decide priorities for the next one. It is not to approve or review all patches. That should happen continuously on GitHub and be handled by the larger group of Committers.

Other items that can be discussed during these meetings are cross-project collaboration, modifications of governance, contribution policy, TSC membership, release process, etc.

Any community member or committer can ask that something be added to the next meeting’s agenda by logging a GitHub Issue. Anyone can add the item to the agenda by adding the “TSC agenda” tag to the issue.

Additional meetings can be scheduled when required, at a time that works for the TSC members. An example of such a meeting will be when defining what a hint should do (or when proposing an update), there is not an initial agreement in the GitHub discussion, and action needs to be taken.

Prior to each TSC meeting, the moderator will share the Agenda with members of the TSC. TSC members can add any items they like to the agenda at the beginning of each meeting. The moderator and the TSC cannot veto or remove items.

The TSC may invite persons or representatives from certain projects to participate in a non-voting capacity.

The moderator is responsible for summarizing the discussion of each agenda item.

Consensus Seeking Process

The TSC follows a Consensus Seeking decision making model.

When an agenda item has appeared to reach a consensus, the moderator will ask “Does anyone object?” as a final call for dissent from the consensus.

If an agenda item cannot reach a consensus, a TSC member can call for either a closing vote or a vote to table the issue to the next meeting. The call for a vote must be approved by a majority of the TSC or else the discussion will continue. Simple majority wins.

When discussing details on how a hint should work, the same consensus principle applies, with the difference that it is seeked in the related GitHub issue.

This work is a derivative of ESLint Governance, YUI Contributor Model, and the JS Foundation TAC Charter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.