Working Group Guidelines and Definition

Owned by John Mark Walker (Deactivated)
Last updated: Apr 20, 2023 by Kyle McCormick
2 min read

This page has been archived in favor of How to Make a New Working Group

A working group is a team dedicated to a project or projects that fit under an easily definable umbrella. Perhaps they're designed to create and/or facilitate a particular feature set in Open edX. Or they're an authoritative body giving the community structure and a process for decision making. 

Proposal

Creating a new WG requires participation and/or permission from someone in a leadership position in the Open edX community. Right now, that's a limited group that includes @Edward Zarecor @Ned Batchelder (Deactivated), and @Braden MacDonald. In order to be officially sanctioned in the Open edX community, a WG must meet some requirements:

Requirements

  1. The topic must be related to Open edX, or a use case scenario for Open edX

  2. There must be adequate control and feedback into the Open edX community - a WG functions with bidirectional communication with the larger community

  3. Generally all communication as to the work of the WG should be public, understanding that sometimes a matter may need to be private. In such cases, please consult with Open edX leadership

  4. All code produced within the WG must be compatible with a license presently used by Open edX

  5. All documentation produced within the WG must be licensed under a Creative Commons share alike license (CC-BY-SA)

  6. Any code generated by the WG must be published in a repository in the openedx or edx umbrella organizations on GitHub 

  7. All code contributors must either sign an individual CLA for edX or be specifically included under their organization's CLA

The Proposal Process

  1. Check to see if the topic of collaboration is already covered by an existing WG

  2. Post an introductory 'RFC' link to the #governance slack channel and ask for comments

  3. Find an Open edX leader to join or sponsor the effort

  4. The Open edX leader will:

    1. Request any initial resources be created

    2. List the WG on the Working Groups page in the wiki

  5. Create corresponding Slack channel and/or mailing list

  6. Schedule, at a minimum, quarterly meetings and publish them on the community calendar

Acceptance

The Open edX leader involved in the WG will either approve or circulate among other leaders for approval. 

WG founders should stay in close contact with their leadership liaison through this process to work out any questions arising from the proposal.