Proposal for Generic Mapping Tools governance structure

README.md

@@ -1,26 +1,27 @@
 # GMT Oversight
 
-As of August 2016, GMT development and maintenance is being guided by a GMT Steering
-Committee:
-
-* David Sandwell (Scripps) - Chair
-* Louise Kellogg (UC Davis)
-* Dave Caress (MBARI)
-* Steve Diggs (Scripps)
-* Dan Bassett (GNS Science, New Zealand)
-* Khalid Soofi (ConocoPhillips)
+Oversight documents for the Generic Mapping Tools, including a list of current [Steering Committee members](steering-committee-membership.md)
+and the project's [governance structure](governance.md).
 
 ## Updates
 
+* May 2024 (expected): Voting on the [governance model](governance.md) and [Steering Committee membership](steering-committee-membership.md) updates.
+* April 2024: First proposal for a [governance model](governance.md).
 * March 2018: Louise Kellogg joined the Steering Committee.
+* August 2016: The initial Steering Committee was established as David Sandwell (Scripps, Chair), Dave Caress (MBARI), Steve Diggs (Scripps), Dan Bassett (GNS Science, New Zealand), Khalid Soofi (ConocoPhillips).
 
 ## Reports
 
-The GMT Team shall update the Steering Committee with timely reports. It has proven more
-reasonable to provide these reports twice a year as a quarter is a bit too short to add
-much new material.
+The Steering Committee will meet twice per year and generate reports based on those
+discussions. Prior to 2018 were generated by the GMT developers and are available at:
 
 * [November 2018](reports/2018-11.md)
 * [March 2018](reports/2018-03.md)
 * [September 2017](reports/2017-09.md)
 * [March 2017](reports/2017-03.md)
+
+## License
+
+[![Creative Commons License](https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
+The [governance document](governance.md) is licensed under a
+[Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

governance.md

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+# Main Governance Document
+
+The official version of this document, along with a list of individuals and
+institutions in the roles defined in the governance section below, is contained
+in The Project Governance Repository at:
+
+https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/oversight
+
+## The Project
+
+The Generic Mapping Tools (The Project) is an open source software project. The goal 
+of The Project is to develop open source software and related technology for manipulating
+geographic and Cartesian data sets and producing high-quality illustrations and animations.
+The Software developed by The Project is released under open source licenses including
+LGPL and BSD, developed openly and  hosted in public GitHub repositories under the 
+GenericMappingTools GitHub organization. Examples of Project Software include the 
+GMT C library and the Python (PyGMT), Julia (GMT.jl), and MATLAB (GMT/MEX) wrappers.
+The Services run by The Project consist of public websites and web-services that
+are hosted under the generic-mapping-tools.org domain. Examples of Project Services
+include the Generic Mapping Tools website (https://www.generic-mapping-tools.org/),
+the Generic Mapping Tools data servers (listed at https://www.generic-mapping-tools.org/mirrors/),
+the Generic Mapping Tools Discourse Forum (https://forum.generic-mapping-tools.org/), and the
+PyGMT project domain (https://www.pygmt.org).
+
+The Project is developed by a team of distributed developers, called
+Contributors. Contributors are individuals who have contributed to code, code
+reviews, documentation, design, and infrastructure, or to mailing lists, chats,
+community help and community building, education and outreach, or other work in
+relation to one or more Project repositories. 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, the Discourse Forum, and community meetings. The foundation of Project
+participation is openness and transparency.
+
+Here is a list of the current Contributors to the main GMT repository:
+
+https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/graphs/contributors
+
+There are also many other Contributors listed in the logs of other repositories
+of the Generic Mapping Tools Project.
+
+The collection of all Contributors to The Project and stakeholders in The
+Project, including Users and Funders, is called The Community.  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.
+
+## Governance
+
+### The Steering Committee
+
+The Project will have a Steering Committee that consists of Project Contributors
+nominated as explained below. The Steering Committee should be composed of
+a diverse array of backgrounds, viewpoints and talents. The overall role of the
+Committee is to ensure, through taking input from the Community, the long-term
+well-being of The Project, both technically and as a community. As The Project
+draws its strength from representing the Community, it strives to avoid
+fragmentation of the Community into separate projects, if possible.
+The Steering Committee will maintain a minimum of three members.
+
+During the everyday Project activities, Committee Members participate in all
+discussions, code review and other Project activities as peers with all other
+Contributors and the Community. In these everyday activities, Committee Members do
+not have any special power or privilege through their membership on the Committee.
+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 Committee Members will provide useful guidance, both technical and in terms
+of Project direction, to potentially less experienced Contributors.
+
+The Steering Committee and its Members play a special role in certain situations.
+In particular, the Committee may:
+
+* 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 the Services that are run by The Project.
+* Make decisions when regular Community discussion doesn’t produce consensus on
+  an issue in a reasonable time frame.
+
+Outcomes and decisions should be clearly communicated to the Community. This can
+take three different forms:
+
+* New challenges for The Project will be detailed as a GitHub discussion in the oversight
+  repository or a topic on the GMT Forum for the Community to discuss.
+* Resolved technical deadlocks will result in an explanation on the relevant
+  issue and/or closure of the relevant pull request.
+* Other decisions will be detailed as a narrative blog post or announcement on the website.
+
+#### Committee Membership
+
+To become eligible for being a Steering Committee Member an individual must be a
+Project Contributor who has produced contributions that are substantial in
+quality and quantity, and sustained over at least six months. Steering Committee Members should
+have a GitHub account to participate in discussions and document decisions. Project contributions
+can include contributions within the Generic Mapping Tools organization (e.g., GMT,
+GMT wrappers, GMT services) or to closely related upstream (e.g., GDAL) or
+downstream (e.g., GMTSAR, MB System) projects. After confirming the potential Committee
+Member is interested and willing to serve in that capacity, Members are nominated by
+Community Contributors and voted upon by the existing Committee via majority vote.
+
+When considering potential Members, the Committee 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 Committee Membership will be evaluated.
+
+There are two mechanisms by which a Committee Member may exit the Steering
+Committee:
+
+1. Committee Members may resign their posting at any time during their tenure on
+   the Steering Committee. In order to maintain an active, energetic, and healthy
+   Committee, Committee Members will self-facilitate membership check-ins every 6
+   months to confirm that each member intends on continue their service on the
+   Committee.
+2. A majority of the existing Committee votes to remove a Member.
+
+If a Committee Member becomes inactive in The Project for a period of one year,
+they will be considered for removal from the Committee. Before removal, an
+inactive Member will be approached by the a Committee Member to see if they plan
+on returning to active participation. If not they will be removed immediately
+upon a Committee 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
+Committee without further grace period.
+
+All former Committee Members can be considered for Membership again at any time
+in the future, like any other Project Contributor. Retired Committee Members
+will be listed on the Project website, acknowledging the period during which
+they were active in the Committee.
+
+#### Expectations for Committee Members
+
+Steering Committee members are expected to commit to the following activities:
+- Attend a one-hour steering committee meeting every six months.
+- Respond in a timely manner to steering-committee-related correspondence.
+- Act as an ambassador for the project in professional contexts.
+
+The chair of the Steering Committee is expected to arrange the regular meetings
+and ensure that a report is shared with the community.
+
+## Changing the Governance Documents
+
+Changes to the governance documents are submitted via a GitHub pull request to
+The Project's governance documents GitHub repository at
+https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/oversight. The pull request is then refined in
+response to public comment and review, with the goal being consensus in the
+community. The period for open comment will last in proportional to the
+complexity of the changes; major changes will be open for comment for no less
+than two weeks. After this open period, a Steering Committee Member proposes to
+the Steering Committee that the changes be ratified and the pull request merged
+(accepting the proposed changes) or proposes that the pull request be closed
+without merging (rejecting the proposed changes). The Member should state the
+final commit hash in the pull request being proposed for acceptance or rejection
+and briefly summarize the pull request. A minimum of 80% of the Steering Committee
+must vote and at least 2/3 of the votes must be positive to carry out the
+proposed action (fractions of a vote rounded up to the nearest integer).
+
+## References
+
+This governance document is based on the [Pangeo governance model](https://github.com/pangeo-data/governance).

steering-committee-membership.md

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+# Steering Committee Membership
+
+With the creation of a formal governance structure, the Generic Mapping Tools Steering
+Committee with be re-constituted with membership decided by active project developers
+and previous core developers in June 2024.