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The OpenSCD project started by Omicron Electronics and contains contributions from Alliander, Transpower and more. It currently has no project charter like CoMPAS does. The idea is to limit the amount of governance as much as possible and create great software. By experience, we see that some guidelines need to be in place in order to be effective.
(DanM: I'd like to see a way to finance and fund OpenSCD, starting by a Patreon or OpenCollective account, for example. I shall donate $30/month!)
OpenSCD governance structure (DRAFT)
In order to be more clear on the roles and responsibilities in OpenSCD, a governance setup is needed. In order to be effective as an open source community; clear structures and guidelines are needed to prevent confusion. This becomes more urgent with the move towards OpenSCD-core where the plug-ins/components can be in seperate separate repositories.
Organisation level governance idea
Administrative rights for the github.com/openscd organisation have been with Jakob Vogelsang and Christian Dinkel from when the OpenSCD project was first published by OMICRON in 2020. As more parties have taken an interest in the project since then, we could set up something analogous to a technical steering committee with a representative from each contributing party (Alliander, OMICRON, TransPower, and others as they join) who meet monthly to make overarching organisation-wide decisions, appoint maintainers for individual repositories, and adopt new repositories into the organisation and who are given administrative rights for the GitHub @openscd organisation. Jakob and Christian would like to know what the other parties involved think of this idea.
Repistory maintainer (Plugin Project Lead?)Repository maintainer:
Ultimate authority on a specific OpenSCD plugin. The maintainer is trusted to make decisions for a specific set of functionality bundled within a plugin.
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- Coordinates development/review work in the project
- Controls access to the projectrepository
- Prioritises Prioritizes work in the projectrepository
- Is responsible for the quality of the code / quality level / architecture
- Prepares and authorises authorizes releases of the plugin
- Enforce a proper code/solution architecture to keep the maintainability and flexibility in the future
- Make any decisions on the direction of the repository
Recommondations
If decisions affect a big group, please use the refinement process to get buy-in and feedback.
Open Questions:
- When to give someone a new repository?
- DanM: A new official repository under the OpenSCD group should be created when the OpenSCD organization
accepts a plugin for integration with the "standard" distribution. This may occur at an early stage, prior to the first release in order to allow coordination and integration with other project features on Github (labels, milestones etc.). - DanM: In general those wishing to join the project should have demonstrated a willingness to commit some time and effort on other OpenSCD projects or have a minimum viable product prior to the repository being created under the OpenSCD group. (I think this is a reasonable set of open source house rules )
- DanM: A new official repository under the OpenSCD group should be created when the OpenSCD organization
- How can edit OpenSCD organization projects?
- Theire are currently only an limited amount of guys with access the OpenSCD organisation projects
- Who decides that?
- DanM: I think we should have an official OpenSCD organisation and would like to nominate J Vogelsang and C Dinkel as benevolent dictators for life. They had the initial vision and interest and care about (a) open source, (b) and open community. I don't think a great deal of documentation for this should be required, it could just be stated on the README for now. I am much more nervous about making this a "standing position" for a company...
- DanM: I think those above should have control of the OpenSCD organisation.
- DanM: I think we should have an official OpenSCD organisation and would like to nominate J Vogelsang and C Dinkel as benevolent dictators for life. They had the initial vision and interest and care about (a) open source, (b) and open community. I don't think a great deal of documentation for this should be required, it could just be stated on the README for now. I am much more nervous about making this a "standing position" for a company...
- Why not bring OpenSCD under the LF energy umbrella for clear governance and support?
- DanM: On a volunteer project I worry about overhead in reporting and governance being unsustainable and key members might feel this didn't allow them to focus their time, energy and attention in the areas they were most interested.
- DanM: Most open source projects are mission driven, but part of the mission is writing code and not doing "management overhead" and sometimes that feels counterproductive. I think for OpenSCD to be under a formal structure like this maybe it would need a minimum commitment of financial support from key partners to make it worth the while and to allow project leads or BDFLs to co
- Who takes part in the "community counsil"?
- All organisaiton owners in OpenSCD on Github; People · OpenSCD - Open (S)ubstation (C)ommunication (D)esigner (github.com)
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