Vitess is a meritocratic, consensus-based community project. Anyone with an interest in the project can join the community, contribute to the project design and participate in the decision making process. This document describes how that participation takes place and how to set about earning merit within the project community.

Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community and without them the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no special requirements.

The project asks its users to participate in the project and community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user contributions include (but are not limited to):

• evangelising about the project (e.g. a link on a website and word-of-mouth awareness raising)
• informing developers of strengths and weaknesses from a new user perspective
• providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
• providing financial support (the software is open source, but its developers need to eat)

Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often become more and more involved. Such users may find themselves becoming contributors, as described in the next section.

Contributors will be added to the Contributors list.

Contributors are community members who contribute in concrete ways to the project. Anyone can become a contributor. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements and no selection process.

In addition to their actions as users, contributors may also find themselves doing one or more of the following:

• supporting new users (existing users are often the best people to support new users)
• reporting bugs
• identifying requirements
• providing graphics and web design
• programming
• assisting with project infrastructure
• writing documentation
• fixing bugs
• adding features

Contributors engage with the project through the issue tracker, mailing list, the Slack channel, or by writing or editing documentation. They submit changes to the project itself via pull requests, which will be considered for inclusion in the project by existing maintainers (see next section). The Slack channel is the most appropriate place to ask for help when making that first contribution.

As contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, their profile within, and commitment to, the community will increase. At some stage, they may find themselves being nominated for maintainership.

Maintainers are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued development of the project through ongoing engagement with the community. Maintainership allows contributors to more easily carry on with their project related activities by giving them direct access to the project’s resources. That is, they can make changes directly to project outputs, without having to submit changes via pull requests.

This does not mean that a maintainer is free to do what they want. In fact, maintainers have no more authority over the project than contributors. While maintainership indicates a valued member of the community who has demonstrated a healthy respect for the project’s aims and objectives, their work continues to be reviewed by the community before acceptance in an official release.

A maintainer is not allowed to merge their change without approval from another person. However, they are allowed to sidestep this rule under justifiable circumstances. For example:

• If a CI tool is broken, they may override the tool to still submit the change.
• Minor typos or fixes for broken tests.
• The change was approved through other means than the standard process.

Anyone can become a maintainer; there are no special requirements, other than to have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the project as a team player. Typically, a potential maintainer will need to show that they have an understanding of the project, its objectives and its strategy. They will also have provided valuable contributions to the project over a period of time.

New maintainers can be nominated by any existing maintainer. Once they have been nominated, there will be a vote by the project management committee (PMC; see below). Maintainer voting is one of the few activities that takes place on the project’s private management list. This is to allow PMC members to freely express their opinions about a nominee without causing embarrassment. Once the vote has been held, the aggregated voting results are published on the public mailing list. The nominee is entitled to request an explanation of any ‘no’ votes against them, regardless of the outcome of the vote. This explanation will be provided by the PMC Chair (see below) and will be anonymous and constructive in nature.

Nominees may decline their appointment as a maintainer. However, this is unusual, as the project does not expect any specific time or resource commitment from its community members. The intention behind the role of maintainer is to allow people to contribute to the project more easily, not to tie them in to the project in any formal way.

It is important to recognise that maintainership is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned it can be removed by the PMC for conduct inconsistent with the Guiding Principles or if they drop below a level of commitment and engagement required to be a maintainer, as determined by the PMC. The PMC also reserves the right to remove a person for any other reason inconsistent with the goals of Vitess.

A maintainer who shows an above-average level of contribution to the project, particularly with respect to its strategic direction and long-term health, may be nominated to become a member of the PMC. This role is described below.

The Project Management Committee has been dissolved. The project will move to a steering committee model of governance. In the interim, the maintainer team will fulfill the responsibilities that were formerly assigned to the PMC.

All participants in the community are encouraged to provide support for new users within the project management infrastructure. This support is provided as a way of growing the community. Those seeking support should recognise that all support activity within the project is voluntary and is therefore provided as and when time allows. A user requiring guaranteed response times or results should therefore seek to purchase a support contract from a community member. However, for those willing to engage with the project on its own terms, and willing to help support other users, the community support channels are ideal.

Anyone can contribute to the project, regardless of their skills, as there are many ways to contribute. For instance, a contributor might be active on the Slack channel and issue tracker, or might create pull requests. The various ways of contributing are described in more detail in a separate document.

The Slack channel list is the most appropriate place for a contributor to ask for help when making their first contribution.

Decisions about the future of the project are made by the PMC. New proposals and ideas can be brought to the PMC’s attention through the Slack channel or by filing an issue. If necessary, the PMC will seek input from others to come to the final decision.

The PMC’s decision is itself governed by the project’s Guiding Principles, which shall be used to reach consensus. If a consensus cannot be reached, a simple majority voting process will be used to reach resolution. In case of a tie, the PMC chair has the casting vote.

The contents of this document are based on http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/meritocraticgovernancemodel by Ross Gardler and Gabriel Hanganu.