Version 1.0.0, 30/5/2018
The main purpose of the Steering Group (SG) is to manage the governance of the ETF Validator in order to ensure its use and sustainability by the Community, keeping it aligned to its needs. The main aspects to be governed by the SG are the following:
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Product Roadmap management including the prioritization of main functionalities for milestones according to the Community needs
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Project Policies and Practices, defining the main rules to ensure the governance of the ETF Validator
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Communication channels to establish an adequate level of communication to the Community
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Infrastructure Management. SG will be responsible of the physical infrastructure of the ETF Validator.
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Intellectual Property Management, establishing the license policy for the development of the ETF Validator
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Communicate with developers and ETF stakeholders about the shared vision of what ETF is meant to achieve
The SG will manage the project roadmap, including the definition of milestones and prioritisation of development efforts.
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The SG maintains the milestones (that should not include version numbers) of the project roadmap in the source code repository (including proposed timing/release dates of milestones) and assigns tasks or enhancements that are already documented as issues to these milestones. After all taks/enhancement have been associated to a milestone, the SG will request the TC to provide feedback to identify risks or if there may be breaking changes. The TC will be responsible to provide a version number for all changes, based on the Semantic Versioning Schema.
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The TC can always merge Pull Requests that fix issues or that enhance the software, independently of the roadmap or the SG, as long as these do not break backward compatibility or may have any negative impact on the roadmap (like changes that affect a component being worked on in the roadmap).
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The TC decides when bugfixes are released based on the severity. The SG must inform the TC if a bug is critical so that a bugfix can be released as soon as possible. The independence allows the TC to provide bug fixes as fast as possible without waiting for new SG agreed milestones.
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The SG also decides how long existing releases should be supported and about questions related to backwards-compatibility of external APIs (e.g. the API for developing ETS, the Web API, etc.)
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SG members are expected to guide the major development efforts of the project. This may include deciding which development efforts should receive priority when different efforts are in conflict.
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A major development effort which is intended to become part of ETF can be proposed by any interested party, SG, or non SG (see 3. Improvement Proposals). However, the effort must be approved by the SG before it can begin.
The SG is responsible for reviewing and approving project policies and practices
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Steering Group Terms of Reference maintenance, adapting them to the Community needs
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Technical Committee Terms of Reference maintenance, adapting them to the Community needs
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SG membership management according to the established criteria (see 2.SG Membership)
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Code of Conduct
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Review and request changes on Development Practices from the Technical Committee, if comments are received from stakeholders
By default, all discussions and decisions of the SG are public.
The Community must be supported by different communication channels to ensure a suited support for its needs. Therefore, the following channels are proposed:
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ETF main webpage, where the latest information on the product must be reflected, mainly, regarding: Roadmap, Releases, Repositories… The webpage will be governed by the SG and maintained by the TC.
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Helpdesk to provide assistance to the Community. A first level of assistance will be provided by the TC and, where needed, the SG will provide assistance.
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Mailing list, compiling main relevant changes and news for the product (the list should not be used for technical discussions). The mailing list will be governed by the SG and maintained by the TC.
SG is responsible for maintaining the physical infrastructure that supports the elements that make up the ETF development and maintenance environment
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Repository ownership. The group will own and be responsible for the product, having administrator access to the repositories and managing user access to those repositories.
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Communication infrastructure management: all the elements that are involved in the communication processes are managed by the SG: ETF webpage, mailing list, helpdesk.
The SG will be coordinate the management of the product licenses and intellectual property management, in collaboration and agreement with the IPR owners.
The currently used licences are available here.
All contributors are asked to provide an agreement for working on the project, depending on the nature of the contributor, it will be classified in:
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Corporate contributor, if the contributor is an organization or a company.
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Individual contributor, in case the contribution comes from a person interested in cooperate with the project
The corresponding agreements will be printed, signed, scanned and emailed to the SG for its incorporation to the authorization process of the contributor.
The SG is made up of individuals who are intended to represent the various communities which have a stake in the use of ETF Validator as a reference implementation of INSPIRE ETSs.
Organizations appoint one primary and one secondary representative. The secondary representative votes for his organization, if the primary is not attending.
The inaugural members are:
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JRC
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Interactive instruments
SG members may invite observers to SG meetings.
The list of SG members is open and it is intended to be as extensive as possible to represent at this level as much as possible the Community needs. Thus, a process to incorporate new SG members must be set up.
New SG member can be nominated at any time. Voting for a new SG must be done by current active SG members. There is no hard limit to the number of SG members, but the membership must be given in recognition to very significant contributions to the project.
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Organizations, with a significant investment in ETF
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Developers, via a proven commitment of self-funded contributions to ETF
Membership must be reviewed and confirmed by a vote of all SG members for each member every year.
The process of obtaining TC membership is based on proven technical capacity.
The TC will propose to the SG new members to be incorporated according to their proven merits.
The SG will assess and accept/reject new TC members proposal.
The members of the group shall decide by voting on the aspects to be approved in accordance with the established terms of reference.
SG shall reach aim to reach all decisions by consensus of all members. If no consensus can be reached, exceptionally a simple majority vote shall be used.
The following mechanism is used to propose and agree on improvement proposals:
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Proposals can be written up and submitted by anyone in the community according to a defined ETF Improvement Proposals Rules (to be agreed) and include a note on whether (full or partial) funding is available for implementing the proposal or not.
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The proposal is made available to the community, and stakeholders can express support or comment on the proposal.
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The SG decides if and when to include proposals in the product roadmap, taking into account also the comments and level of support expressed by the community.
The assets that the group has to produce and maintain in order to establish the main lines of the ETF development for the Community are the following:
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Project Roadmap
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Repository infrastructure
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Communication infrastructure
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ETF Improvement Proposals Rules
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Corporate contributor license agreement
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Individual contributor license agreement
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Steering Group Terms of Reference
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Technical Committee Terms of Reference
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Code of Conduct