Closed mrhinkle closed 6 years ago
In the regularly scheduled Node.js Foundation Board meeting on August 29, the Board provided feedback on changes that we hope will improve the Node.js community governance. The Board also reconvened on August 31 to further discuss how to better support the Node.js community. The board is committed to providing more resources and improving interaction with the TSC, the technical governing body of the Node.js Foundation, and other areas of the community to increase understanding of their dynamics and support to their efforts. Additionally, we will continue to monitor the changes in our community leadership and provide support whenever and wherever possible.
As a practice, the Board gives feedback but tries not to dictate a solution to the leadership of the open source project and encourages the Node.js community to come to a final consensus on what they think is best. The following is a summary of some of the topics that the Board has evaluated:
Merger of the CTC and TSC - https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/pull/317
This initiative has been underway for quite sometime, but given recent events this seems to be the right move as it brings a broader, more diverse group of collaborators into the TSC governance. This merger was completed on August 29 and nominations for a new TSC Director are underway.
Moderation Policy Updates - https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/pull/276
The Board supports the TSC’s move toward the creation of a Moderation team and recommends that they have a clear process defined and posted for the community to refer to. Additionally we would expect the moderation team to adhere to a policy that shows good leadership as they act as role models for others in the Node.js community.
TSC Charter Updates - https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/pull/318
The Board encourages the TSC to provide a much clearer definition of what constitutes violations of the charter in specific terms and process for handling violations and disputes. The Board will help with providing resources to the TSC if requested to help reduce disputes and better define the process.
In addition the Board proposed a regular TSC/Board call to improve communication and understanding between the two bodies.
The Board will continue to work with the community to find a constructive way forward and to improve the governance, so that we can continue to improve Node.js as a technology and do so in a collaborative, productive manner.
We welcome additional questions and suggestions; please direct them to Mark Hinkle, Node.js Executive Director (mark@nodejs.org).
The Node.js Board of Directors
Earlier this week, the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) announced the results of a vote to remove a member from the TSC based on a pattern of behavior, summarized in https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310. The vote asked two specific questions: Should the member be removed from the TSC and should the member be asked to voluntarily resign from the TSC? For both questions, the results were the same: six responded 'No', four responded 'Yes', two members of the TSC abstained, and one member was recused. As a result of this vote, four TSC members stepped down from their positions: Anna Henningsen, Bryan Hughes, Myles Borins, and Jeremiah Senkpiel.
We, as well as the community, were deeply concerned by these events, and as a result convened a private, meeting of the Node.js board on Tuesday August 22nd. It was deemed necessary to clearly articulate our position and values as the Node.js Foundation Board as follows:
We believe that this issue is extremely important and that timeliness and thoroughness of response is critical. As a result, the Board will be devoting the entirety of its August 28th meeting to a private discussion of the current situation. In this session, we’ll be focused both on responding to this incident, as well as reviewing long term governance changes to the TSC, CTC, and Community Committee Charter and rules while respecting the need for these groups to preserve their independence of operation. Due to time constraints, the public board meeting will be canceled for this month, however, we will continue to communicate updates to the community, as they become available. If any member of the community has questions they should direct them to:
The Node.js Board of Directors