TST Governance

Aether Governance & TST

Governance of the Aether™ project is intended to foster a technical meritocracy within the context of stewardship by the Aether Technical Steering Team (TST), under the guidance of the Aether Directed Fund Governing Board and the Linux Foundation LLC.   

The Technical Steering Team is responsible for all technical decisions having to do with the Aether project and the Aether codebase. The Aether codebase is the software distribution represented by the Aether trademark, distributed within the different repos in github. It is entirely up to the technical steering team to decide what constitutes the Aether project.  

The TST is intended to be an oversight body, and is not intended to have responsibility for patch-level project decisions.

Link to Technical Charter

Link to Fund Charter

Goals

The goals of Aether project governance are to:

• Provide an environment that thrives on technical meritocracy. Merit is based on technical contribution, not on financial contribution.

• Have strong technical vision and shepherding. This ensures architectural integrity of the codebase.

• Provide a framework for Aether teams and projects – how they are started, how they are managed, how TST members are elected, and how projects are disbanded when no longer needed.

• Be clear on how Aether software evolves – how code is added to (or removed from) the project.

• Be clear on how decisions are made and conflicts resolved in the community.

• Make it easy for community members to participate.

• Avoid bureaucracy.

• Create a great codebase.

Principles

The principles of Aether governance are in line with these community values:

• Serve our Community.

• Practice true Meritocracy.

• Operate with Transparency.

• Strive for Quality, consistently.

• Value and enable Innovation.

• Respect others in all Interactions.

In addition, the overarching governance principle is to act in the best interest of the broader community.

Governance Structure

The Aether project is governed by the Aether Technical Steering Team (TST). The TST is guided by the Aether Directed Fund Governing Board, which in turn operates under the oversight of the Linux Foundation.

The Aether TST takes primary responsibility for release planning and collaborating with the community to guide architectural and technical choices. The TST is responsible for leading periodic community calls, release coordination, and documentation, with assistance as needed from LF staff.  

Roles and Responsibilities

TST members here include all elected TST members in term, including the chair. The responsibilities of TST members include:

• Strategic technical guidance and release coordination

• Attending weekly community meetings and (if needed) separately scheduled TST meetings

• Technical decisions when needed by the community. In general, technical decisions are made regularly in the community channels by lazy consensus. If there is a need for a more formal decision the TST is responsible for making the decision.

• Reviewing collaboration proposals

• Helping folks that yet do not know details of the project

• Guiding/helping the community with questions asked and problems raised from Slack channels and mailing lists. 

• Creating project teams or working groups as needed

• Documentation contribution

The TST chair has these additional responsibilities:

• Release planning in coordination with the Aether Directed Fund Governing Board

• Calling separate TST member meetings when needed

• Leading TST and/or community meetings and preparing content agenda

• Engaging new members and developers, with assistance from LF staff

• Ensure documentation is maintained, both technical and operational (i.e. meeting minutes)

TST Voting and Quorum

• If consensus cannot be reached, a TST decision may be reached with a one vote per voting member basis. 

• Quorum requires at least 50% of all voting members. For TST meetings, the TST can continue to meet if a quorum is not achieved but cannot make any decisions. 

• If quorum is met at a TST meeting requiring a vote, majority vote is required of those voting members who are present. If a vote is required by electronic means, a majority vote is required of all voting members of the TST. 

Technical Steering Team

Current TST Members

Email: tst@lists.aetherproject.org 

The technical steering team is responsible for all technical decisions having to do with the Aether project and the Aether codebase. The Aether codebase is the software distribution represented by the Aether trademark, distributed within the different repos in github. It is entirely up to the technical steering team to decide what constitutes the Aether project.  

The TST is intended to be an oversight body, and is not intended to have responsibility for patch-level project decisions (i.e., formally approve Pull Requests).

TST Election Process

New technical steering team members will be elected on a yearly basis. Each Elected Member shall be elected to serve for a term of two (2) years, or until his or her earlier resignation or removal.  TST elections shall be staggered, if possible, so that roughly half of the Elected Member seats are up for election each year.

Elections of TST members shall be conducted as follows:

Nominations

For each election, the project PM will send out notification to the Aether community that will include the election timeline, number of seats available, list of eligible nominees (contributors), and nomination and voting process. Interested voting members may nominate themselves or other eligible members. 

Elections

The TST should use a multiple-candidate method of voting, such as Condorcet Helios or single transferable vote.  Multiple-candidate methods may be replaced by a simple election by a plurality of votes when there are only two candidates for one position to be filled.  No election is required if there is only one candidate running and no voting TST member voices an objection.  In the event of a tied outcome, the TST may determine the winner or a process to resolve the tie.

Voting Members

Individuals eligible to vote in TST elections include:

• Any contributor, a module owner, or a project owner who has submitted (and had accepted) or reviewed, as applicable, at least two patchsets in the prior twelve (12) months. 

• Current Members of the Aether TST and Directed Fund Governing Board.

Becoming a Contributor

Guidelines for becoming a contributor to Aether are can be found here:

https://docs.aetherproject.org/master/developer/contributing.html