Revising OpenWrt Rules

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 02:36:42PM -0400, Rich Brown wrote:
> I offer the following as a "Release Candidate 1" replacement for the
> original OpenWrt Rules at https://openwrt.org/rules. I believe they
> are a fair summary of the responses to my original notes.
>
> Much of this is a restatement of the original rules, retaining those
> procedures but making explicit the sense of trust between people that
> underlies the current rules.  [..]
> 
> As an RC1 document, further comments are welcome.

Sorry for my slow reply.


> Finally, thank you for all the deeply considered responses and for the
> delightfully respectful discussion. It makes me proud to be a member
> of the Project.

Thank you for striving to create an optimal set of rules for the health
of the OpenWrt community.  That OpenWrt developers/decision-makers care
about this is a major positive in OpenWrt's favour, for me as a user.


> OpenWrt Project Rules - RC1 14Oct2020
> 
> 1. The OpenWrt Project (the "Project") is governed by a group of
> Decisionmakers who have demonstrated a long-standing commitment to
> OpenWrt through high quality contributions of code, documentation,
> organization, or leadership of the Project.
> 
> 2. Decisionmakers affect the direction of the Project - product
> features, code, documentation, governance - by their personal efforts,
> by proposing changes to other Decisionmakers, and by approving
> contributions from others. The Project adopts proposals by a majority
> vote of all Decisionmakers. 
> 
> 3. OpenWrt's success hinges on the trust of character and judgement
> developed between Decisionmakers. Because of that trust, the Project
> can move forward without requiring every Decisionmaker to examine and
> agree to every decision.
> 
> 4. A contributor to OpenWrt may become a Decisionmaker when it is
> obvious that they have a track record of high quality contributions
> (code, documentation, organizational suggestions, etc.) that enhance
> the project. After a nomination by a Decisionmaker and second by
> another, a simple majority vote is required to welcome a new
> Decisionmaker. The current list of Decisionmakers appears on this
> page. [Move the current list of "People" from the
> https://openwrt.org/about page]
> 
> 5. To ensure that OpenWrt always has a quorum for votes,
> Decisionmakers are required to remain active in the project. We will
> develop a process whereby we can remind members of their obligations,
> and remove them from the list if they no longer wish to participate,
> or do not participate in votes for three months. 

This contains a hostage to fortune.  Instead of leaving it in and
requiring the rules to be updated (or to seem out-of-date) at some point
in the future...

    "We will develop a process whereby we can remind members of their
    obligations, and remove them from the list if they no longer wish to
    participate, or do not participate in votes for three months."

... I propose pinning it down.

I also propose a different criterion for forcing retirement of
Decisionmakers.  I think it should be different because:

- Decisionmakers with long-term dedication to OpenWrt might occasionally
  experience life events that legitimately keep them away from OpenWrt
  for >3 months (unexpected bereavements, serious illness, etc.).  It
  seems healthiest (for OpenWrt *and* for the Decisionmaker) if
  Decisionmakers are not under strong pressure to vote during such
  periods, but can instead resume voting when recovered & clear-headed.

- 3-month periods (or longer) might elapse during which no votes are
  held.

Here is my proposed alternative wording:

    "On the first day of January, April, July, and October, OpenWrt
    will:
    (a) thank for their previous service, and remove from the list of
    Decisionmakers, any Decisionmaker who participated in fewer than 50%
    of the votes that both opened after the Decisionmaker's tenure began
    and closed before the current day; and
    (b) email all other Decisionmakers a copy of these rules, and remind
    them that they can retire from the Decisionmaker list if they wish."



> 6. Decisionmakers owe an obligation of transparency to the members of
> the OpenWrt community. All decisions must be made public on the
> Project website. To the extent possible (exempting, for example,
> certain matters such as personnel and security issues), the decision
> making process should also be conducted in public.

Thank you for this wording.

I think you captured the spirit of the diverse good intentions of the
people who weighed in on this point.  I also think you improved on the
original.  Great job.


> 7. Discussions of proposals may take place in any venue: the
> OpenWrt-Admin list, the OpenWrt-Devel list, the IRC channels, the
> OpenWrt Forum, and elsewhere. A formal call for a vote on the
> OpenWrt-Admin list will be held open for 14 days: Decisionmakers must
> respond (with approve, disapprove, abstain, or a request for more
> information) in that time frame.

I recognise that one can't very well prevent people from discussing
OpenWrt proposals wherever and however they like.  But I don't like the
thought of discussion moving to venues with poor accessibility, perhaps
preventing some Decisionmakers from participating; or to venues where
records of the discussion might disappear, preventing people in the
future from being able to view the discussion and thereby understand the
reasoning around a proposal.

It might be wise to add wording something like:

    "OpenWrt-hosted discussion venues are always preferred over other
    venues.  Venues with universal accessibility and open standards
    (e.g. mailing lists) are always preferred over other venues.  Venues
    that produce reliable long-term public archives of their content are
    always preferred over other venues.  Discussions are distinct from
    votes.  Decisionmakers are welcome, but not required, to participate
    in discussions."

Maybe some of this should be put into item 6.


> 8. Any Decisionmaker may request, and automatically be granted,
> permission to commit changes to code, the documentation, forum, etc.
> However, we rely on the judgement of all Decisionmakers to recognize
> their strengths and we expect they will only request the permissions
> necessary for their participation.
> 
> 9. Any infrastructure should be FOSS, whether outsourced or operating
> on Project servers. Any service requires at least three people with
> full rights to administer it. Those administrators will be documented
> publicly.
> 
> 10. The Project will not provide email accounts to individuals under
> its domain name.
> 
> 11. Changes to these rules require a two-thirds majority vote of
> Decisionmakers. 
> 
> 12. All OpenWrt community members agree to be nice to each other.

Maybe rule 12 should instead be rule 0, but only if others wouldn't find
this too pushy.

Thank you again for your excellent efforts!

Sam

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