First Contribution by Japhet Koech

The Dolphicom Project

Reviewer name: JAPHET KIPLANGAT

Here is the LINK to the project's governance model.

The Dolphicom project is an Open source project whose main aim is to develop open-source software for scientific analysis of bioacoustics in Python and the Dolphicom package.

Leadership and Governance

The project governance is anchored on transparency, active contribution, and institutional neutrality. This governance model has heavily adapted from Jupyter's and Numpy governance documents.

A benevolent dictator (BDFL ) provides the primary leadership of the project. A BDFL has the authority to make final project decisions, however, to preserve the benevolence of this position, the BDFL is rarely expected to assert his authority and instead delegates that authority to the consensus of conflicting parties. A BDFL offers guidance and support in situations when the steering council is at loggerheads and the council requests the BDFL to make a decision on a particular matter. A BDFL has the authority to appoint his successor in consultation with the steering council.

The Steering Council is another arm of leadership in the Project and is composed of project contributors with sustained and significant contributions over at least a one-year period. Individuals with significant contributions to the project are considered for calling to the council. Metrics for considerations as potential are not only limited to code but also Infrastructure work, mailing lists, chat participation, and community building. There are other two leadership roles within the Steering council, the Council chair and the Release manager. The project roles for the council and the two leadership positions are detailed below.

The Steering Council

Updating of policy documents
Providing guidance on strategic collaboration with relevant partners
Make decisions on the project's vision and overall direction
Offering of technical guidance on important technical issues, features, bugs, and technical requests.
Make decisions on projects run by the organization, and manage these projects for the benefit of the community

Council Chair

Ensuring the project's documentation i.e code of conduct, and fiscal sponsorship agreement are continuously updated and stored.
Ensuring matters discussed in private by the steering council are added to the mailing list to update the community on the happenings.
Ensuring the composition of the steering council stays updated.
Summarizing relevant organizational updates and issues in the preceding period and engaging the community through the mailing list of suggestions to improve the project.
Beginning a biannual assessment of the project's technical direction (as recorded by the "Scipy-roadmap"), around the middle of April and the middle of October.

Release manager

Creating software releases and announcing them on relevant channels.
Providing guidance on the content of a release in situations where there is a lack of consensus on a particular change of feature.
Proposing and making decisions on the timing of a release.

Voting and Decision-making Process

All council members shall disclose to the rest of the council any conflict of interest they have on various issues. Members with conflicting interests are allowed to participate in community discussions but are not allowed to participate in the voting process touching on the conflict of interest. In instances where a formal decision is required, the governing model allows for voting through the Apache voting process. This voting process is unique, a +1 vote indicates an agreement, -1 votes are vetos and should be accompanied by a rationale informing of this decision, and also allows for a fractional voting system. The fractional voting system is important in getting the general feel of the community towards a certain matter.

Institutional partnerships

Institutional partners are acknowledged in the governance model as part of the community due to the important role of funding they offer to the project. Institutions become eligible to become Institutional partners by employing individuals who actively contribute to The Project as part of their official duties. Only using the Project software in an institutional context does not qualify an entity to become an Institutional Partner. The steering council is responsible for approving an entity for institutional partnership once the thresholds are met. Institutional partnerships will last if an entity ceases having individuals actively contributing to the project for over a one-year time period.

Accessing and Understanding the governance model

The governance model was easily accessible in the project documentation. The project's documentation is organized and clearly written and this made understanding the governance model much easier. Project's documentation is quite detailed and had past governance models, this enabled me to further understand the project and how the project's governance policies have evolved over time

numfocus / outreachy-contributions-2023