Merge pull request #6352 from njsmith/governance

DEV: Governance document (draft)

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+================================================================
+  NumPy project governance and decision-making
+================================================================
+
+The purpose of this document is to formalize the governance process
+used by the NumPy project in both ordinary and extraordinary
+situations, and to clarify how decisions are made and how the various
+elements of our community interact, including the relationship between
+open source collaborative development and work that may be funded by
+for-profit or non-profit entities.
+
+Summary
+=======
+
+NumPy is a community-owned and community-run project. To the maximum
+extent possible, decisions about project direction are made by community
+consensus (but note that "consensus" here has a somewhat technical
+meaning that might not match everyone's expectations -- see below). Some
+members of the community additionally contribute by serving on the NumPy
+steering council, where they are responsible for facilitating the
+establishment of community consensus, for stewarding project resources,
+and -- in extreme cases -- for making project decisions if the normal
+community-based process breaks down.
+
+The Project
+===========
+
+The NumPy Project (The Project) is an open source software project
+affiliated with the 501(c)3 NumFocus Foundation. The goal of The Project
+is to develop open source software for array-based computing in Python,
+and in particular the ``numpy`` package, along with related software
+such as ``f2py`` and the NumPy Sphinx extensions. The Software developed
+by The Project is released under the BSD (or similar) open source
+license, developed openly and hosted on public GitHub repositories under
+the ``numpy`` GitHub organization.
+
+The Project is developed by a team of distributed developers, called
+Contributors. Contributors are individuals who have contributed code,
+documentation, designs or other work to the Project. Anyone can be a
+Contributor. Contributors can be affiliated with any legal entity or
+none. Contributors participate in the project by submitting, reviewing
+and discussing GitHub Pull Requests and Issues and participating in open
+and public Project discussions on GitHub, mailing lists, and other
+channels. The foundation of Project participation is openness and
+transparency.
+
+The Project Community consists of all Contributors and Users of the
+Project. Contributors work on behalf of and are responsible to the
+larger Project Community and we strive to keep the barrier between
+Contributors and Users as low as possible.
+
+The Project is formally affiliated with the 501(c)3 NumFOCUS Foundation
+(http://numfocus.org), which serves as its fiscal sponsor, may hold
+project trademarks and other intellectual property, helps manage project
+donations and acts as a parent legal entity. NumFOCUS is the only legal
+entity that has a formal relationship with the project (see
+Institutional Partners section below).
+
+Governance
+==========
+
+This section describes the governance and leadership model of The
+Project.
+
+The foundations of Project governance are:
+
+-  Openness & Transparency
+-  Active Contribution
+-  Institutional Neutrality
+
+Consensus-based decision making by the community
+------------------------------------------------
+
+Normally, all project decisions will be made by consensus of all
+interested Contributors. The primary goal of this approach is to ensure
+that the people who are most affected by and involved in any given
+change can contribute their knowledge in the confidence that their
+voices will be heard, because thoughtful review from a broad community
+is the best mechanism we know of for creating high-quality software.
+
+The mechanism we use to accomplish this goal may be unfamiliar for those
+who are not experienced with the cultural norms around free/open-source
+software development. We provide a summary here, and highly recommend
+that all Contributors additionally read `Chapter 4: Social and Political
+Infrastructure <http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#social-infrastructure>`_
+of Karl Fogel's classic *Producing Open Source Software*, and in
+particular the section on `Consensus-based
+Democracy <http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#consensus-democracy>`_,
+for a more detailed discussion.
+
+In this context, consensus does *not* require:
+
+-  that we wait to solicit everybody's opinion on every change,
+-  that we ever hold a vote on anything,
+-  or that everybody is happy or agrees with every decision.
+
+For us, what consensus means is that we entrust *everyone* with the
+right to veto any change if they feel it necessary. While this may sound
+like a recipe for obstruction and pain, this is not what happens.
+Instead, we find that most people take this responsibility seriously,
+and only invoke their veto when they judge that a serious problem is
+being ignored, and that their veto is necessary to protect the project.
+And in practice, it turns out that such vetoes are almost never formally
+invoked, because their mere possibility ensures that Contributors are
+motivated from the start to find some solution that everyone can live
+with -- thus accomplishing our goal of ensuring that all interested
+perspectives are taken into account.
+
+How do we know when consensus has been achieved? In principle, this is
+rather difficult, since consensus is defined by the absence of vetos,
+which requires us to somehow prove a negative. In practice, we use a
+combination of our best judgement (e.g., a simple and uncontroversial
+bug fix posted on GitHub and reviewed by a core developer is probably
+fine) and best efforts (e.g., all substantive API changes must be posted
+to the mailing list in order to give the broader community a chance to
+catch any problems and suggest improvements; we assume that anyone who
+cares enough about NumPy to invoke their veto right should be on the
+mailing list). If no-one bothers to comment on the mailing list after a
+few days, then it's probably fine. And worst case, if a change is more
+controversial than expected, or a crucial critique is delayed because
+someone was on vacation, then it's no big deal: we apologize for
+misjudging the situation, `back up, and sort things
+out <http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#version-control-relaxation>`_.
+
+If one does need to invoke a formal veto, then it should consist of:
+
+-  an unambiguous statement that a veto is being invoked,
+-  an explanation of why it is being invoked, and
+-  a description of what conditions (if any) would convince the vetoer
+   to withdraw their veto.
+
+If all proposals for resolving some issue are vetoed, then the status
+quo wins by default.
+
+In the worst case, if a Contributor is genuinely misusing their veto in
+an obstructive fashion to the detriment of the project, then they can be
+ejected from the project by consensus of the Steering Council -- see
+below.
+
+Steering Council
+----------------
+
+The Project will have a Steering Council that consists of Project
+Contributors who have produced contributions that are substantial in
+quality and quantity, and sustained over at least one year. The overall
+role of the Council is to ensure, with input from the Community, the
+long-term well-being of the project, both technically and as a
+community.
+
+During the everyday project activities, council members participate in
+all discussions, code review and other project activities as peers with
+all other Contributors and the Community. In these everyday activities,
+Council Members do not have any special power or privilege through their
+membership on the Council. However, it is expected that because of the
+quality and quantity of their contributions and their expert knowledge
+of the Project Software and Services that Council Members will provide
+useful guidance, both technical and in terms of project direction, to
+potentially less experienced contributors.
+
+The Steering Council and its Members play a special role in certain
+situations. In particular, the Council may, if necessary:
+
+-  Make decisions about the overall scope, vision and direction of the
+   project.
+-  Make decisions about strategic collaborations with other
+   organizations or individuals.
+-  Make decisions about specific technical issues, features, bugs and
+   pull requests. They are the primary mechanism of guiding the code
+   review process and merging pull requests.
+-  Make decisions about the Services that are run by The Project and
+   manage those Services for the benefit of the Project and Community.
+-  Update policy documents such as this one.
+-  Make decisions when regular community discussion doesn’t produce
+   consensus on an issue in a reasonable time frame.
+
+However, the Council's primary responsibility is to facilitate the
+ordinary community-based decision making procedure described above. If
+we ever have to step in and formally override the community for the
+health of the Project, then we will do so, but we will consider reaching
+this point to indicate a failure in our leadership.
+
+Council decision making
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+If it becomes necessary for the Steering Council to produce a formal
+decision, then they will use a form of the `Apache Foundation voting
+process <https://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html>`_. This is a
+formalized version of consensus, in which +1 votes indicate agreement,
+-1 votes are vetoes (and must be accompanied with a rationale, as
+above), and one can also vote fractionally (e.g. -0.5, +0.5) if one
+wishes to express an opinion without registering a full veto. These
+numeric votes are also often used informally as a way of getting a
+general sense of people's feelings on some issue, and should not
+normally be taken as formal votes. A formal vote only occurs if
+explicitly declared, and if this does occur then the vote should be held
+open for long enough to give all interested Council Members a chance to
+respond -- at least one week.
+
+In practice, we anticipate that for most Steering Council decisions
+(e.g., voting in new members) a more informal process will suffice.
+
+Council membership
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+A list of current Steering Council Members is maintained at the
+page :ref:`governance-people`.
+
+To become eligible to join the Steering Council, an individual must be
+a Project Contributor who has produced contributions that are
+substantial in quality and quantity, and sustained over at least one
+year. Potential Council Members are nominated by existing Council
+members, and become members following consensus of the existing
+Council members, and confirmation that the potential Member is
+interested and willing to serve in that capacity. The Council will be
+initially formed from the set of existing Core Developers who, as of
+late 2015, have been significantly active over the last year.
+
+When considering potential Members, the Council will look at candidates
+with a comprehensive view of their contributions. This will include but
+is not limited to code, code review, infrastructure work, mailing list
+and chat participation, community help/building, education and outreach,
+design work, etc. We are deliberately not setting arbitrary quantitative
+metrics (like “100 commits in this repo”) to avoid encouraging behavior
+that plays to the metrics rather than the project’s overall well-being.
+We want to encourage a diverse array of backgrounds, viewpoints and
+talents in our team, which is why we explicitly do not define code as
+the sole metric on which council membership will be evaluated.
+
+If a Council member becomes inactive in the project for a period of one
+year, they will be considered for removal from the Council. Before
+removal, inactive Member will be approached to see if they plan on
+returning to active participation. If not they will be removed
+immediately upon a Council vote. If they plan on returning to active
+participation soon, they will be given a grace period of one year. If
+they don’t return to active participation within that time period they
+will be removed by vote of the Council without further grace period. All
+former Council members can be considered for membership again at any
+time in the future, like any other Project Contributor. Retired Council
+members will be listed on the project website, acknowledging the period
+during which they were active in the Council.
+
+The Council reserves the right to eject current Members, if they are
+deemed to be actively harmful to the project’s well-being, and attempts
+at communication and conflict resolution have failed. This requires the
+consensus of the remaining Members.
+
+
+Conflict of interest
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+It is expected that the Council Members will be employed at a wide range
+of companies, universities and non-profit organizations. Because of
+this, it is possible that Members will have conflict of interests. Such
+conflict of interests include, but are not limited to:
+
+-  Financial interests, such as investments, employment or contracting
+   work, outside of The Project that may influence their work on The
+   Project.
+-  Access to proprietary information of their employer that could
+   potentially leak into their work with the Project.
+
+All members of the Council shall disclose to the rest of the Council any
+conflict of interest they may have. Members with a conflict of interest
+in a particular issue may participate in Council discussions on that
+issue, but must recuse themselves from voting on the issue.
+
+Private communications of the Council
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+To the maximum extent possible, Council discussions and activities
+will be public and done in collaboration and discussion with the
+Project Contributors and Community. The Council will have a private
+mailing list that will be used sparingly and only when a specific
+matter requires privacy. When private communications and decisions are
+needed, the Council will do its best to summarize those to the
+Community after eliding personal/private/sensitive information that
+should not be posted to the public internet.
+
+Subcommittees
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The Council can create subcommittees that provide leadership and
+guidance for specific aspects of the project. Like the Council as a
+whole, subcommittees should conduct their business in an open and public
+manner unless privacy is specifically called for. Private subcommittee
+communications should happen on the main private mailing list of the
+Council unless specifically called for.
+
+NumFOCUS Subcommittee
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The Council will maintain one narrowly focused subcommittee to manage
+its interactions with NumFOCUS.
+
+-  The NumFOCUS Subcommittee is comprised of 5 persons who manage
+   project funding that comes through NumFOCUS. It is expected that
+   these funds will be spent in a manner that is consistent with the
+   non-profit mission of NumFOCUS and the direction of the Project as
+   determined by the full Council.
+-  This Subcommittee shall NOT make decisions about the direction, scope
+   or technical direction of the Project.
+-  This Subcommittee will have 5 members, 4 of whom will be current
+   Council Members and 1 of whom will be external to the Steering
+   Council. No more than 2 Subcommitee Members can report to one person
+   through employment or contracting work (including the reportee, i.e.
+   the reportee + 1 is the max). This avoids effective majorities
+   resting on one person.
+
+The current membership of the NumFOCUS Subcommittee is listed at the
+page :ref:`governance-people`.
+
+
+Institutional Partners and Funding
+==================================
+
+The Steering Council are the primary leadership for the project. No
+outside institution, individual or legal entity has the ability to own,
+control, usurp or influence the project other than by participating in
+the Project as Contributors and Council Members. However, because
+institutions can be an important funding mechanism for the project, it
+is important to formally acknowledge institutional participation in the
+project. These are Institutional Partners.
+
+An Institutional Contributor is any individual Project Contributor who
+contributes to the project as part of their official duties at an
+Institutional Partner. Likewise, an Institutional Council Member is any
+Project Steering Council Member who contributes to the project as part
+of their official duties at an Institutional Partner.
+
+With these definitions, an Institutional Partner is any recognized legal
+entity in the United States or elsewhere that employs at least 1
+Institutional Contributor of Institutional Council Member. Institutional
+Partners can be for-profit or non-profit entities.
+
+Institutions become eligible to become an Institutional Partner by
+employing individuals who actively contribute to The Project as part of
+their official duties. To state this another way, the only way for a
+Partner to influence the project is by actively contributing to the open
+development of the project, in equal terms to any other member of the
+community of Contributors and Council Members. Merely using Project
+Software in institutional context does not allow an entity to become an
+Institutional Partner. Financial gifts do not enable an entity to become
+an Institutional Partner. Once an institution becomes eligible for
+Institutional Partnership, the Steering Council must nominate and
+approve the Partnership.
+
+If at some point an existing Institutional Partner stops having any
+contributing employees, then a one year grace period commences. If at
+the end of this one year period they continue not to have any
+contributing employees, then their Institutional Partnership will
+lapse, and resuming it will require going through the normal process
+for new Partnerships.
+
+An Institutional Partner is free to pursue funding for their work on The
+Project through any legal means. This could involve a non-profit
+organization raising money from private foundations and donors or a
+for-profit company building proprietary products and services that
+leverage Project Software and Services. Funding acquired by
+Institutional Partners to work on The Project is called Institutional
+Funding. However, no funding obtained by an Institutional Partner can
+override the Steering Council. If a Partner has funding to do NumPy work
+and the Council decides to not pursue that work as a project, the
+Partner is free to pursue it on their own. However in this situation,
+that part of the Partner’s work will not be under the NumPy umbrella and
+cannot use the Project trademarks in a way that suggests a formal
+relationship.
+
+Institutional Partner benefits are:
+
+-  Acknowledgement on the NumPy websites, in talks and T-shirts.
+-  Ability to acknowledge their own funding sources on the NumPy
+   websites, in talks and T-shirts.
+-  Ability to influence the project through the participation of their
+   Council Member.
+-  Council Members invited to NumPy Developer Meetings.
+
+A list of current Institutional Partners is maintained at the page
+:ref:`governance-people`.
+
+
+Document history
+================
+
+https://github.com/numpy/numpy/commits/master/doc/source/dev/governance/governance.rst
+
+Acknowledgements
+================
+
+Substantial portions of this document were adapted from the
+`Jupyter/IPython project's governance document
+<https://github.com/jupyter/governance/blob/master/governance.md>`_.
diff --git a/doc/source/dev/governance/index.rst b/doc/source/dev/governance/index.rst
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@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+#####################
+Contributing to Numpy
+#####################
+
+.. toctree::
+   :maxdepth: 3
+
+   governance
+   people
diff --git a/doc/source/dev/governance/people.rst b/doc/source/dev/governance/people.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a0f08b57d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/source/dev/governance/people.rst
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+.. _governance-people:
+
+Current steering council and institutional partners
+===================================================
+
+Steering council
+----------------
+
+* Sebastian Berg
+
+* Jaime Fernández del Río
+
+* Ralf Gommers
+
+* Alex Griffing
+
+* Charles Harris
+
+* Nathaniel Smith
+
+* Julian Taylor
+
+* Pauli Virtanen
+
+
+Emeritus members
+----------------
+
+* Travis Oliphant - Project Founder / Emeritus Leader (served: 2005-2012)
+
+
+NumFOCUS Subcommittee
+---------------------
+
+* Chuck Harris
+
+* Ralf Gommers
+
+* Jaime Fernández del Río
+
+* Nathaniel Smith
+
+* External member: Thomas Caswell
+
+
+Institutional Partners
+----------------------
+
+*  UC Berkeley (Nathaniel Smith)
+
+
+Document history
+----------------
+
+https://github.com/numpy/numpy/commits/master/doc/source/dev/governance/governance.rst
diff --git a/doc/source/dev/index.rst b/doc/source/dev/index.rst
index b0d0ec483..cb71a3e5c 100644
--- a/doc/source/dev/index.rst
+++ b/doc/source/dev/index.rst
@@ -7,5 +7,6 @@ Contributing to Numpy
 
    gitwash/index
    development_environment
+   governance/index
 
 For core developers: see :ref:`development-workflow`.