Governance Working Group

As we get closer to pushing code into the "openedx" organization on GitHub, we want to establish a system of governance. The goal of this new GitHub organization is to streamline the process of collaborating with other members of the community, and the task of the governance working group is to establish how best to do that, as well as run the overall community. 

Things under the purview of this working group: 

• What does governance mean in the context of the Open edX community
  • edX is a community member - include them from the beginning
  • what is the scope - 
• Open edX GitHub Organization Governance
  • If we are going to use the Open edX GitHub organization as a place for low-friction community-driven development, we need to propose a set of minimally acceptable standards for those projects. We should also define who wants to be involved in governance and what we should call ourselves - Open edX advisory board? 
• T&L a 1st-class citizen of Open edX community
  • Includes instructional design community, educators
  • Where is it used? Can we construct user studies around 
• Commit rights and pathways to project and community leadership
  • Each project determines its committers and reviewers, irrespective of Open edX participation
• Diversity and inclusion in the Open edX community
  • edX to create and enforce code of conduct
• GitHub maintenance and minimum requirements
• All projects will only accept code from people and organizations that have a signed CLA
  • edX will manage the CLA process and provide access to the list of signatories
• Working groups - how do we want to handle the structure and deliverables of working groups? 
  • See working group guidelines page
  • Thus far, the governance (so meta!), APIs, instructional design,  and analytics working groups are in some stage of incubation

Other proposed topics/responsibilities for this group:

• Technical decision making process definition (OEPs, architecture decisions…) - invite edX engineers/architects/leads to become part of the governance group as needed?
  
• Communication tools (mailing lists, forums, chat, etc.) - definition of official channels, policies & moderation
• Legal questions related to contributions - include edX legal when topics come up?
• Organization of community events, like the conferences & dev summits (worth making it its own working group?)
• Board to appeal or rediscuss issues related to contributions & their acceptance - not to override technical or product decisions, but to ensure there is always a path for contributors (eg: sort out roadblocks/delays on specific contributions or community projects; in cases where a contribution is refused/redirected to a plugin, ensure there is a way for the contributor to develop that plugin in a maintainable way; etc.) - invite edX engineers/architects/leads to become part of the governance group as needed?
• Open edX website content - including things like editorial supervision, contributions ranking, etc.