Governance

Summary

Thousand Brains Project adopts a hierarchical technical governance structure for Monty.

• A community of Contributors who file issues, make pull requests, and contribute to the project.
• A small set of Maintainers, who drive the overall project direction.
• The Maintainers have a Lead Maintainer, the catch-all decision maker.

All Maintainers are expected to have a strong bias towards the Thousand Brains Project and Monty's design philosophy.

Contributors are encouraged to participate by filing issues, making pull requests, and contributing to the project.

Lead Maintainer

The current Lead Maintainer is listed in the MAINTAINERS file.

Responsibilities

• Make the final decision when Maintainers cannot reach a consensus or make a decision.
• Confirm or deny adding new or removing current Maintainers.

Maintainers

The current Maintainers are listed in the MAINTAINERS file.

Responsibilities

• Maintain Monty's design philosophy, technical direction, and conventions.
• Engage with the community and Contributors.
• Triage, review, and comment on issues.
• Triage and comment on pull requests.
• Review and merge assigned pull requests.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for assigned Requests For Comments (RFCs).
• Propose disposition of RFCs (e.g., merge or close).
• Approve or abstain from the disposition of RFCs.

Adding Maintainers

• Any Maintainer can nominate a new Maintainer by starting a private email thread amongst all the current Maintainers with the nomination and proposing that the nominee be invited to join.
• The Maintainers are given sufficient time to respond to the nomination. If there is disagreement, a discussion ensues, possibly resulting in a vote.
• The Lead Maintainer confirms or denies the nomination.

Removing Maintainers

• Any Maintainer can propose to remove a current Maintainer by starting a private email thread amongst all the current Maintainers, excluding the person proposed to be removed.
• The Maintainers are given sufficient time to respond to the removal proposal. If there is disagreement, a discussion ensues, possibly resulting in a vote.
• The Lead Maintainer confirms or denies the removal.

Resigning as a Maintainer

• Any Maintainer can resign by contacting the Lead Maintainer privately.

Selecting the Lead Maintainer

• The Lead Maintainer is selected by the Executive Director of the Thousand Brains Project.