Updated May 2011
The Opencast community is a collaboration of individuals, higher education institutions and organizations working together to explore, develop, define and document best practices and technologies for management of audiovisual content in academia. The community shares experiences with existing technologies and practices as well as identifying future approaches and requirements. The community seeks broad participation in this important and dynamic domain, to allow community members to share expertise and experience and collaborate in related projects.
The Opencast community also supports community-driven projects to solve common issues in management of academic audiovisual content as identified by the community. Today, the prime example is the Opencast Matterhorn project, an open source software development project to develop video capture and management technologies that are of primary importance to the Opencast community’s mission. The project seeks participation from committers and contributors who engage to forward effective development of the project.
The governance of the Opencast community and the Matterhorn project are interrelated, but each has unique needs driven by its objectives. This document recommends different but interrelated governance structures for the Opencast community, and for the Matterhorn project. We expect both structures to evolve, and future projects to participate in and inform this evolution. The detailed expectations and practices of the governing bodies will be documented and maintained on the Opencast Community wiki.
Collectively, the governance structure has four key purposes:
- Ensure the sustainability and health of projects and community;
- Provide the structure to support growth in the form of new adopters, collaborators, committers and resources;
- Support effective development and maintenance of Matterhorn and future projects;
- Allow both the community and the projects to achieve their goals of enhancing the management of audiovisual content in academia.
This document frames the governance structure for the Opencast community and the projects supported by the community. Today this includes Matterhorn. In order to address the full range of governance the document includes three segments:
- Opencast community governance;
- Project governance of those projects supported by the Opencast community, which today includes Matterhorn;
- Coordination and review, which span both the community and the projects.
Opencast Community Governance
The community’s governance structure is specifically focused on achieving broad collaboration in the academic media domain, and ensuring the long-term health of community-supported projects. To this end, the governance approach supports broad engagement and allows significant latitude to define areas of focus that strengthen the evolving community and projects.
The community governance centers on a board elected by the Opencast Community that is designed to represent the will of the community while providing leadership to support community health.
The Board is composed of three categories of individuals, each with a unique selection process and term of service.
- Five members who are elected by the community to serve a three-year term.
- Up to two members who are selected by the board to service a one-year term based on their ability to address current needs of the community.
- One voting member that is a committer who is elected by the committers to serve a one-year term.
- One voting member that is a community evangelist who is selected by the board to serve a one-year term.
Members elected by the community are voted upon by organizations that are contributing to the community or adopting the products developed by the community. Organizations may include higher education institutions, commercial entities, education communities, or any other groups that are participating in the Opencast community.
(1) Any organization that has a current committer will be allowed three votes regardless of the number of committers they have. “Committer” status will be determined by the project governance structure of all Opencast community-supported projects and will be listed on the Opencast website.
(2) Each organization that does not have a current committer but publicly confirms that it has adopted the technology of an Opencast project will be allowed one vote. Adopting institutions will be listed on the Opencast website. Institutions that acknowledge that they have adopted an Opencast project earn the opportunity to participate in the governance process. This visibility also eases collaboration and sharing, affording greater benefit from other community organizations. Adopting organizations have full latitude to define whether they will be listed publicly and gain the associated voting rights.
Committing institutions according to (1) don’t get additional votes for adopting. Each organization may distribute its votes across board candidates in any way.
An election committee composed of the appointed board members and one external and impartial individual selected by the board will manage the election process. The election committee will hold an open nomination process for new board members sixty days prior to the election date, and communicate the nominees who have agreed to run at least 30 days prior to the election date. The election committee will also verify and communicate which organizations are eligible to vote and the number of votes each organization has earned, count all votes, communicate which board members are elected, and keep the detailed voting results confidential.
It is the responsibility of the board to ensure the current and future health of the community. This will require the board to assess the current state and identify areas of focus. Regardless of changing needs, the board has the following responsibilities.
- Select and invite those board members that require nomination and selection by the board.
- Effectively manage financial contributions made to the community.
- Facilitate the community strategic planning and governance review that spans community and project governance. It is important to note that the board does not drive or own the content of the review, but is responsible for ensuring that the review occurs and for facilitating a process that effectively engages committers and community members.
- Actively engage in drawing new organizations into the community.
- Identify and execute processes to secure needed resources of any kind, funding, staff, etc.
- Act on behalf of the Opencast community in creating partnerships that serve the goals of the community.
- Actively participate in community communications activities and community building efforts.
The board will maintain both an open and a closed list for communications. The open list will include all non-confidential deliberations to allow community members to monitor and understand board activities. The closed list will be used only for sensitive and confidential discussions.
The board is not responsible for making project governance decisions, nor for dictating priorities of committers.
The primary focus areas of the board will shift over time with the evolving needs for the community. As such, board members must have a strong commitment to the success of the community and both the willingness and the ability to fill multiple roles based on the needs of the community.
Project Governance
A project’s governance structure is specifically focused on achieving the vision for the product. To this end, the governance approach supports effective development processes that result in frequent, high-quality releases and provide for overall product coherence. It also allows for growth in the project, providing a clear path to contribution and influence for new committers.
Project governance centers on committers. Individuals gain influence and voting rights in the project through recognized contribution.
We define a committer as an individual contributing to the project in a way that deserves participation in the product-related decision-making process.
New committers must be nominated by a current committer, and approved through consensus as described in the governance process below.
The committers agree to the following approach to project governance:
- Project business will be conducted on the open mail lists. Discussion and coordination may occur in meetings or other forums, but resulting recommendations will be moved to the list for broader input and decision-making.
- Committer proposals will be voted upon with responses showing agreement (+1) and disagreement (-1). Such a vote indicates both an opinion, and a commitment to contribute to successful implementation of the proposal. Alternatively, committers may share opinions on matters where they are not agreeing to active participation with a response of agreement (+0) or disagreement (-0).
- Consensus among all who choose to vote is required on major project decisions including but not limited to approval of new committers, changes in governance, product releases, and development decisions that impact project goals and coherence. Consensus is defined as an absence of disagreement (or -1 votes). This definition of consensus is often referred to as lazy consensus, as an absence of disagreement is viewed as support.
- Committers will review the project governance process twice each year to evaluate its effectiveness and refine the approach. This practice will be actively supported by the Opencast community board.
- The project roadmap is defined as the consolidated commitments of all committers. The roadmap can be expanded, reduced or refined through a change in direct commitments from individuals or organizations.
- All committers will allocate 20% of their project time to support the common good of the project. This expectation is a key consideration in the nomination and evaluation of new committers.
- All committers will support release, quality assurance and testing processes for the project.
The project committers suggest the following work practices to increase the effectiveness of project governance.
- The governance process requires committers to actively monitor and participate in discussions on list. This participation is critical to maintain a healthy and vibrant decision-making process, as well as supporting new contributors to learn from the experience of the committers.
- If the discussion on list is outside of a committer’s area of expertise or experience, the committer is not expected to comment or participate.
Coordinating and Review Process
The project and community governance processes require communication and coordination. To this end, the community will be called to convene twice annually. During the semi-annual meetings the community will:
- Complete a brief review of existing governance processes with the objective of validating that existing processes are serving the project and community well, or enhancing the processes to improve results.
- Share updates that span project and community status and progress.
- Review the product roadmap that is the culmination of current commitments. Discuss the project vision, bringing together the views the committers and the broader Opencast community.
- Communicate and seek to align community and development priorities.
- Capture future development and collaboration opportunities beyond the current roadmap.
The board owns the planning and facilitation of these meetings. The board does not drive or own the content of the review but is responsible for ensuring that the review occurs and for facilitating a process that effectively engages committers and community members.
All discussion and recommended decisions resulting from the coordinating and review process will follow the defined governance processes and must be communicated on list for greater participation and feedback.
