Project Steering Committee

The GeoNetwork Project Steering Committee (PSC) makes decisions on GeoNetwork opensource project issues. The PSC consists of a maximum of seven experienced and active members of the community.

In brief the committee votes on proposals on the roadmap. Proposals are available for review for at least two days, and a single veto (-1) is sufficient to delay progress though ultimately a majority of members can pass a proposal.

• GeoNetwork Change Proposals
• Committer Responsibility Guidelines

Members that are inactive can be replaced by the PSC. If the PSC becomes dysfunctional, the project management falls back to the chair.

Members of the Project Steering Committee

• Jeroen Ticheler (jeroen ticheler * geocat net) GeoCat - Chair
• Francois Prunayre Titellus
• Simon Pigot CSIRO
• Florent Gravin CamptoCamp
• Jose Garcia GeoCat
• Paul van Genuchten ISRIC

Former members of the PSC

• Jo Cook
• Patrizia Monteduro (Patrizia Monteduro * fao org) FAO-UN
• Emanuele Tajariol (e tajariol * gmail com) GeoSolutions
• Jesse Eichar
• Andrea Carboni (acarboni * crisalis-tech com - Independent consultant)
• Archie Warnock (warnock * awcubed com) A/WWW Enterprises

Detailed Process

1. Proposals are written up and submitted on the project roadmap board for discussion and voting, by any interested party, not just committee members.

   

2. Opportunity: The project board lists opportunity or challenge under consideration by project leadership.

   This is also used to share sponsorship opportunities for transparency with stakeholders and OSGeo.

3. Proposals are shared for review when ready, and should include a heading to record votes:

   ## Support 
   
   PSC support:
   
   * Florent Gravin:
   * Francois Prunayre:
   * Jeroen Ticheler:
   * Jose Garcia:
   * Paul van Genuchten:
   * Simon Pigot:
   
   Community support:
   
   * non-voting member feedback here
   
   Core contributors:
   
   * Acknowledgements of sponsor, service provider, or customer funding this activity

4. Open for voting: Anyone may comment on proposal, but only members of the Project Steering Committee's votes will be counted.

   • 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 indicates mild support, but has no effect.

   Proposals need to be available for review for at least two business days before a final decision can be made.

5. Vetoed: If a proposal is vetoed (with a -1 vote):

   • It can be revised to satisfy all parties and accepted.

   • If 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.

6. Accepted: A proposal will be accepted if it receives +2 (including the proposer) and no vetoes (-1).

7. Withdrawn: An accepted proposal may be withdrawn (for example of funding was not obtained, or if the opportunity is no longer available).

8. Done: Accepted proposals often turn into an issue or pull-request in GitHub, and can be marked done when complete.

9. The role of the Chair:

   • The Chair gets a vote.
   • The Chair is responsible for keeping track of who is a member of the Project Steering Committee.
   • The Chair adjudicates in cases of disputes about voting.

10. 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.

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.
• Add a new member to the PSC
• Add a new committer to the code repository

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.
• The Chair acts as GeoNetwork project officer representation to Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

See also the Authors document in the documentation