OSGeo Graduation: Document and improve open decision making process

[dstenger]

Please also see #393.

[bermud]

Ideas:

• CITE SC is the group that steers our decisions and roadmap.
• We should update at every TC

[bermud]

Is CITE SC good to be the Steering Group by OSGeo?

• Only OGC members can be part of the CITE SC
• CITE SC can make the dialogue open to everyone.

Ask OSGeo first.

[bermud]

Dirk sent an email to Jody about the SC. Waiting.

[jodygarnett]

OSGeo is asking that projects have a decision making process at all, and wishing to check that the process is open to new contributors joining the project and eventually taking on a leadership role.

Please just link to how decisions are made now

• To be clear paying to be an OGC member to join the CITE SC, it requires money but it is something that anyone can do.

• Even if the project conducts closed meetings you may provide a way to invite a community member as a guest for an agenda item (indeed I was invited yesterday to discuss incubation).

• It helps for transparency if the decisions made by the CITE SC are shared publicly, but this is a tradeoff for the team to consider (I am not sure if meeting minutes are posted to an email list or wiki).

The only way any project has had trouble here is when it is run by a single company (you must be an employee to make a decision) or the Benevolent dictator for life approach. Neither of these is a bad way of making software, but we do consider them a risk factor and not in keeping with "open development".

[bradh]

Does the CITE SC need to be made up of only OGC members?

Not everyone can become an OGC member (because the OGC effectively requires corporate overage for contributors who are employed, and that depends on the employer being willing to pay).

[ghobona]

@bradh OGC allows individuals to join as well

Please see https://www.ogc.org/ogc/join

[ghobona]

2020-11-17 OSGeo Sprint

@ghobona and @dstenger discussed this issue and agreed to propose an approach for the CITE SC to reserve a portion of its quarterly meetings to TEAM Engine. The proposal would be for TEAM Engine discussions to be open to the general public. Voting on TEAM Engine (not the test suites) would be open to the general public. The results of each meeting would be documented in the TEAM Engine wiki.

Next steps:

• Discuss the proposal with CITE SC Chair @cmheazel and get CITE SC approval
• Document the decision making process on the TEAM Engine wiki

[jodygarnett]

Once again I am only asking you link to the process that is in place :)

[jodygarnett]

The check list is here: https://github.com/opengeospatial/teamengine/wiki/OSGEO-Graduation

Last updated in 2020 :) I am available if there are any questions; but I cannot make this an activity a priority for the TEAM Engine team :)

[dstenger]

Wiki page was created: https://github.com/opengeospatial/teamengine/wiki/Decision-making-process

@jodygarnett Can you please do a short review of the wiki page?

[jodygarnett]

https://github.com/opengeospatial/teamengine/wiki/Decision-making-process

Q: Is there a link to the CITE SC? So people can know who to contact and how to join?

I found one here https://www.ogc.org/about-ogc/committees/sc/ but it is OGC Members only link.

If you link https://www.ogc.org/about-ogc/committees/sc/ it is "good enough" for people to find the current committee chair to contact.

Looks good, documents what is in place now without proposing change (lovely).

[dstenger]

Thanks for the feedback.

I added a link to the CITE SC.