Discussion on Addressing Voting Issues and Proposed Update to Committer Rules

[Rich Brown]

See comments below...

> On May 3, 2025, at 12:45, Hauke Mehrtens <hauke at hauke-m.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> As many of you are aware, we've been facing significant challenges with voting in the project for the past few years. A key issue is the large number of inactive committers, which has led to the failure of the last two votes. Although I've participated in several private email discussions and face-to-face conversations about this problem, I don't believe it's been formally raised on the openwrt-adm list yet.
> 
> The current rule regarding inactive committers is not functioning as intended:
> > Committers being unreachable for three months in a row shall get
> > their commit and voting rights revoked in order to retain the ability
> > to do majority votes among the remaining active committers.
> 
> Proposal for an Inactive Committer Category
> 
> I’d like to propose introducing a formal “inactive committer” category. The core idea is to provide a clearer distinction between active and inactive participants, as well as improve security by reducing the number of people with access to our repositories.
> 
> Here’s how the proposal would work:
> 
> * Inactive Committers List:
>    We would add a second list for "inactive committers" on the OpenWrt About page. This would help make it clear to both community members and outsiders who is actively contributing.
> 
> * Commit Credentials for Inactive Committers:
>    The commit credentials of inactive committers would be deactivated until they choose to return to active status. This also increases security, as it reduces the number of accounts with access to the repository.
> 
> * Voluntary Transition Between Statuses:
>    Any committer can voluntarily move themselves between the active and inactive categories at any time, without requiring a vote.
> 
> * Requesting a Move to Inactive:
>    Any active committer can request that another committer be moved to inactive status. The person being moved has 30 days to respond to the request. If they do not respond, or if they agree, they will be moved to inactive status.
> 
> Next Steps and Discussion
> 
> This email is not a formal vote; rather, I am starting a discussion on how we can address this issue and improve our voting process. Below are a few points I hope we can discuss:
> 
> * Feedback on the Proposed Changes:
>    If you have any concerns or suggestions about the proposed rule changes (outlined below), please feel free to share them. I would appreciate solid feedback on any unclear wording, as it’s crucial that we avoid ambiguity in these rules.
> 
> * Alternative Proposals:
>    If you have alternative ideas on how to address the issue of inactive committers, please bring them forward now. I’m open to suggestions, and the goal is to find a solution that works for the community as a whole.
> 
> * Changes to Committer Terminology:
>    I briefly considered changing the term "committers" to "members" in order to make it easier to extend voting rights to people who contribute in ways other than code. I decided to leave it as "committers" for now to reduce the scope, but if there’s enough support for this change, I can revisit it.
> 
> Once we’ve had a good discussion and addressed any concerns, we can proceed with a vote. I think it’s important that we ensure all affected members are personally pinged to participate in the vote when the time comes.
> 
> 
> I am proposing the following rules update (see also attached patch):
> 
> ---------------
> The roles within the OpenWrt (former LEDE) project are: active committers, inactive committers, and non-committers. There is no core developer group or other specially privileged members.
> All active committers have the right to vote and are invited to liberally exercise this voting right in order to keep a broad consensus on project matters.
> Project matters, overall development directions etc. are decided by simple majority votes among all active committers. Votes may be held in different ways like simple yes/no decisions, majority decisions among multiple proposed choices etc.
> Committers may voluntarily switch between active and inactive status at any time.
> The commit credentials of inactive committers are revoked and will be restored upon their return to active status.
> Any active committer may request that another committer be moved to inactive status. This request must be sent by email to the person concerned, with the openwrt-adm mailing list in CC. If the person either agrees or does not respond within 30 days, they will be moved to inactive status.
> There shall be only full commit rights in any case, no partial access or otherwise restricted access to the repositories.
> Frequent contributors may become committers after a simple majority agreement among existing active committers. Project members are free to suggest suitable people.
> Any votes and decisions made will be made public on the project websites.
> Project infrastructure should be outsourced FOSS community operated services whenever possible in order to allow project members to focus on actual development efforts.
> Any infrastructure that cannot be outsourced and/or is operated by the project itself shall be administrable by at least three different people to reduce the likelyhood of the project getting locked out due to operators being unreachable. Responsible operators for the various services shall be documented publicly.
> The project will not offer email accounts under its project domain for privacy and equality reasons.
> Changes to these rules require a two third majority among the committers holding voting rights and shall be documented.
> Be nice to each other.

I am 100% in support of the spirit of this suggestion. I wonder if a smaller modification to the current rules (https://openwrt.org/rules) might get us to the same place...

Currently, Rule 4 states:

4. Committers being unreachable for three months in a row shall get their commit and voting rights revoked in order to retain the ability to do majority votes among the remaining active committers.

I propose the following language because it's not clear what it means to be "unreachable": it's very clear whether people participate in a vote. 

4. Committers WHO DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN A FORMAL VOTE three times in a row shall HAVE their commit and voting rights revoked in order to retain the ability to do majority votes among the remaining active committers.

In addition, we could adopt a few administrative policies to accompany the formal rules to decrease the likelihood of errors:

- Any committer who has not responded to two formal votes could receive one or two additional notifications that they are in danger of losing their committer status (to guard against lost mail messages)
- Those committers whose rights have been revoked should be placed in an "Emeritus" category so their prior contributions remain recognized
- Any Emeritus whose rights were revoked can be re-instated upon their request 
- Every formal vote notice could contain a request to vote, even a "neutral" vote if there is no opinion

Thanks for listening.

Rich