|
| 1 | +## Introduction |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +Dear maintainer. Thank you for investing the time and energy to help |
| 4 | +make this project as useful as possible. Maintaining a project is difficult, |
| 5 | +sometimes unrewarding work. Sure, you will get to contribute cool |
| 6 | +features to the project. But most of your time will be spent reviewing, |
| 7 | +cleaning up, documenting, answering questions, justifying design |
| 8 | +decisions - while everyone has all the fun! But remember - the quality |
| 9 | +of the maintainers work is what distinguishes the good projects from the |
| 10 | +great. So please be proud of your work, even the unglamourous parts, |
| 11 | +and encourage a culture of appreciation and respect for *every* aspect |
| 12 | +of improving the project - not just the hot new features. |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +This document is a manual for maintainers old and new. It explains what |
| 15 | +is expected of maintainers, how they should work, and what tools are |
| 16 | +available to them. |
| 17 | + |
| 18 | +This is a living document - if you see something out of date or missing, |
| 19 | +speak up! |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +## What are a maintainer's responsibility? |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +It is every maintainer's responsibility to: |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +* 1) Expose a clear roadmap for improving their component. |
| 26 | +* 2) Deliver prompt feedback and decisions on pull requests. |
| 27 | +* 3) Be available to anyone with questions, bug reports, criticism etc. |
| 28 | + on their component. This includes IRC and GitHub issues and pull requests. |
| 29 | +* 4) Make sure their component respects the philosophy, design and |
| 30 | + roadmap of the project. |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +## How are decisions made? |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +Short answer: with pull requests to the project repository. |
| 35 | + |
| 36 | +This project is an open-source project with an open design philosophy. This |
| 37 | +means that the repository is the source of truth for EVERY aspect of the |
| 38 | +project, including its philosophy, design, roadmap and APIs. *If it's |
| 39 | +part of the project, it's in the repo. It's in the repo, it's part of |
| 40 | +the project.* |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the |
| 43 | +repository. An implementation change is a change to the source code. An |
| 44 | +API change is a change to the API specification. A philosophy change is |
| 45 | +a change to the philosophy manifesto. And so on. |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +All decisions affecting this project, big and small, follow the same 3 steps: |
| 48 | + |
| 49 | +* Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this. |
| 50 | + |
| 51 | +* Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this. |
| 52 | + |
| 53 | +* Step 3: Accept (`LGTM`) or refuse a pull request. The relevant maintainers do |
| 54 | +this (see below "Who decides what?") |
| 55 | + |
| 56 | +### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too? |
| 57 | + |
| 58 | +Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be |
| 59 | +made through a pull request. |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | +## Who decides what? |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | +All decisions are pull requests, and the relevant maintainers make |
| 64 | +decisions by accepting or refusing the pull request. Review and acceptance |
| 65 | +by anyone is denoted by adding a comment in the pull request: `LGTM`. |
| 66 | +However, only currently listed `MAINTAINERS` are counted towards the required |
| 67 | +two LGTMs. In addition, if a maintainer has created a pull request, they cannot |
| 68 | +count toward the two LGTM rule (to ensure equal amounts of review for every pull |
| 69 | +request, no matter who wrote it). |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +Overall the maintainer system works because of mutual respect across the |
| 72 | +maintainers of the project. The maintainers trust one another to make decisions |
| 73 | +in the best interests of the project. Sometimes maintainers can disagree and |
| 74 | +this is part of a healthy project to represent the point of views of various people. |
| 75 | +In the case where maintainers cannot find agreement on a specific change the |
| 76 | +role of a Chief Maintainer comes into play. |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +The Chief Maintainer for the project is responsible for overall architecture |
| 79 | +of the project to maintain conceptual integrity. Large decisions and |
| 80 | +architecture changes should be reviewed by the chief maintainer. |
| 81 | +The current chief maintainer for the project is the first person listed |
| 82 | +in the MAINTAINERS file. |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | +Even though the maintainer system is built on trust, if there is a conflict |
| 85 | +with the chief maintainer on a decision, their decision can be challenged |
| 86 | +and brought to the technical oversight board if two-thirds of the |
| 87 | +maintainers vote for an appeal. It is expected that this would be a |
| 88 | +very exceptional event. |
| 89 | + |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +### How are maintainers added? |
| 92 | + |
| 93 | +The best maintainers have a vested interest in the project. Maintainers |
| 94 | +are first and foremost contributors that have shown they are committed to |
| 95 | +the long term success of the project. Contributors wanting to become |
| 96 | +maintainers are expected to be deeply involved in contributing code, |
| 97 | +pull request review, and triage of issues in the project for more than two months. |
| 98 | + |
| 99 | +Just contributing does not make you a maintainer, it is about building trust |
| 100 | +with the current maintainers of the project and being a person that they can |
| 101 | +depend on and trust to make decisions in the best interest of the project. The |
| 102 | +final vote to add a new maintainer should be approved by over 66% of the current |
| 103 | +maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power. In case of a veto, |
| 104 | +conflict resolution rules expressed above apply. The voting period is |
| 105 | +five business days on the Pull Request to add the new maintainer. |
| 106 | + |
| 107 | + |
| 108 | +### What is expected of maintainers? |
| 109 | + |
| 110 | +Part of a healthy project is to have active maintainers to support the community |
| 111 | +in contributions and perform tasks to keep the project running. Maintainers are |
| 112 | +expected to be able to respond in a timely manner if their help is required on specific |
| 113 | +issues where they are pinged. Being a maintainer is a time consuming commitment and should |
| 114 | +not be taken lightly. |
| 115 | + |
| 116 | +When a maintainer is unable to perform the required duties they can be removed with |
| 117 | +a vote by 66% of the current maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power. |
| 118 | +The voting period is ten business days. Issues related to a maintainer's performance should |
| 119 | +be discussed with them among the other maintainers so that they are not surprised by |
| 120 | +a pull request removing them. |
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