Governance

ESLint is an open source project that depends on contributions from the community. Anyone may contribute to the project at any time by submitting code, participating in discussions, making suggestions, or any other contribution they see fit. This document describes how various types of contributors work within the ESLint project.

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Users are community members who have a need for the project. Anyone can be a User; there are no special requirements. Common User contributions include evangelizing the project (e.g., display a link on a website and raise awareness through word-of-mouth), informing developers of strengths and weaknesses from a new user perspective, or providing moral support (a “thank you” goes a long way).

Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often become more and more involved. Such Users may find themselves becoming Contributors, as described in the next section.

Contributors

Contributors are community members who contribute in concrete ways to the project, most often in the form of code and/or documentation. Anyone can become a Contributor, and contributions can take many forms. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements, and no selection process.

Contributors have read-only access to source code and so submit changes via pull requests. Contributor pull requests have their contribution reviewed and merged by a TSC member. TSC members and Committers work with Contributors to review their code and prepare it for merging.

As Contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, their profile within, and commitment to, the community will increase. At some stage, they may find themselves being nominated as either a Website Team Member or Committer by an existing Website Team Member or Committer.

Website Team Member

Website Team Members are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued maintenance of eslint.org through ongoing engagement with the community. Website Team Members are given push access to the eslint.org GitHub repository and must abide by the project’s Contribution Guidelines.

Website Team Members:

Are expected to work at least one hour per week triaging issues and reviewing pull requests.
Are expected to work at least two hours total per week on ESLint.
May invoice for the hours they spend working on ESLint at a rate of $50 USD per hour.
Are expected to check in on the #team Discord channel once per week day (excluding holidays and other time off) for team updates.
Are expected to work on public branches of the source repository and submit pull requests from that branch to the master branch.
Are expected to delete their public branches when they are no longer necessary.
Must submit pull requests for all changes.
Have their work reviewed by Reviewers and TSC members before acceptance into the repository.
May label and close website-related issues (see Manage Issues).
May merge some pull requests (see Review Pull Requests).
May take time off whenever they want, and are expected to post in the #team Discord channel when they will be away for more than a couple of days.

To become a Website Team Member:

One must have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the maintenance of eslint.org as a team player. Typically, a potential Website Team Member will need to show that they have an understanding of the structure of the website and how it fits into the larger ESLint project’s objectives and strategy.
Website Team Members are expected to be respectful of every community member and to work collaboratively in the spirit of inclusion.
Have submitted a minimum of 10 website-related pull requests. What’s a website-related pull request? One that is made to the eslint.org repository or the docs directory in the eslint repository and requires little effort to accept because it’s well documented and tested.

New Website Team Members can be nominated by any existing Website Team Member or Committer. Once they have been nominated, there will be a vote by the TSC members.

It is important to recognize that membership on the website team is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned it can be removed by the TSC members by a standard TSC motion. However, under normal circumstances Website Team Members remain for as long as they wish to continue engaging with the project.

Committers

Committers are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued development of the project through ongoing engagement with the community. Committers are given push access to the project’s GitHub repos and must abide by the project’s Contribution Guidelines.

Committers:

Are expected to work at least one hour per week triaging issues and reviewing pull requests.
Are expected to work at least two hours total per week on ESLint.
May invoice for the hours they spend working on ESLint at a rate of $50 USD per hour.
Are expected to check in on the #team Discord channel once per week day (excluding holidays and other time off) for team updates.
Are expected to work on public branches of the source repository and submit pull requests from that branch to the master branch.
Are expected to delete their public branches when they are no longer necessary.
Are expected to provide feedback on issues in the “Feedback Needed” column of the Triage Board.
Are expected to work on at least one issue in the “Ready to Implement” column of the Triage Board that they didn’t create each month.
Must submit pull requests for all changes.
Have their work reviewed by TSC members before acceptance into the repository.
May label and close issues (see Manage Issues).
May merge some pull requests (see Review Pull Requests).
May take time off whenever they want, and are expected to post in the #team Discord channel when they will be away for more than a couple of days.

To become a Committer:

One must have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the project as a team player. Typically, a potential Committer will need to show that they have an understanding of and alignment with the project, its objectives, and its strategy.
Committers are expected to be respectful of every community member and to work collaboratively in the spirit of inclusion.
Have submitted a minimum of 10 qualifying pull requests. What’s a qualifying pull request? One that carries significant technical weight and requires little effort to accept because it’s well documented and tested.

New Committers can be nominated by any existing Committer. Once they have been nominated, there will be a vote by the TSC members.

It is important to recognize that committership is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned it can be removed by the TSC members by a standard TSC motion. However, under normal circumstances committership exists for as long as the Committer wishes to continue engaging with the project.

A Committer who shows an above-average level of contribution to the project, particularly with respect to its strategic direction and long-term health, may be nominated to become a reviewer, described below.

Reviewers

Reviewers are community members who have contributed a significant amount of time to the project through triaging of issues, fixing bugs, implementing enhancements/features, and are trusted community leaders.

Reviewers may perform all of the duties of Committers, and also:

May merge external pull requests for accepted issues upon reviewing and approving the changes.
May merge their own pull requests once they have collected the feedback they deem necessary. (No pull request should be merged without at least one Committer/Reviewer/TSC member comment stating they’ve looked at the code.)
May invoice for the hours they spend working on ESLint at a rate of $80 USD per hour.

To become a Reviewer:

Work in a helpful and collaborative way with the community.
Have given good feedback on others’ submissions and displayed an overall understanding of the code quality standards for the project.
Commit to being a part of the community for the long-term.
Have submitted a minimum of 50 qualifying pull requests.

A Committer is invited to become a Reviewer by existing Reviewers and TSC members. A nomination will result in discussion and then a decision by the TSC.

Technical Steering Committee (TSC)

The ESLint project is jointly governed by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) which is responsible for high-level guidance of the project.

The TSC has final authority over this project including:

Technical direction
Project governance and process (including this policy)
Contribution policy
GitHub repository hosting

TSC seats are not time-limited. The size of the TSC can not be larger than five members. This size ensures adequate coverage of important areas of expertise balanced with the ability to make decisions efficiently.

The TSC may add additional members to the TSC by a standard TSC motion.

A TSC member may be removed from the TSC by voluntary resignation, by a standard TSC motion, or by missing four consecutive TSC meetings. In all cases, the TSC member will revert to Reviewer status unless they prefer Alumni status.

Changes to TSC membership should be posted in the agenda, and may be suggested as any other agenda item (see “TSC Meetings” below).

No more than 1/3 of the TSC members may be affiliated with the same employer. If removal or resignation of a TSC member, or a change of employment by a TSC member, creates a situation where more than 1/3 of the TSC membership shares an employer, then the situation must be immediately remedied by the resignation or removal of one or more TSC members affiliated with the over-represented employer(s).

TSC members have additional responsibilities over and above those of a Reviewer. These responsibilities ensure the smooth running of the project. TSC members are expected to review code contributions, approve changes to this document, manage the copyrights within the project outputs, and attend regular TSC meetings.

TSC members may perform all of the duties of Reviewers, and also:

May release new versions of all ESLint projects.
May participate in TSC meetings.
May propose budget items.
May propose new ESLint projects.

There is no specific set of requirements or qualifications for TSC members beyond those that are expected of Reviewers.

A Reviewer is invited to become a TSC member by existing TSC members. A nomination will result in discussion and then a decision by the TSC.

TSC Meetings

The TSC meets every other week in the TSC Meeting Discord channel. The meeting is run by a designated moderator approved by the TSC.

Items are added to the TSC agenda which are considered contentious or are modifications of governance, contribution policy, TSC membership, or release process.

The intention of the agenda is not to approve or review all patches. That should happen continuously on GitHub and be handled by the larger group of Committers.

Any community member, Committer, or Reviewer can ask that something be added to the next meeting’s agenda by logging a GitHub Issue. Anyone can add the item to the agenda by adding the “tsc agenda” tag to the issue.

Prior to each TSC meeting, the moderator will share the Agenda with members of the TSC. TSC members can add any items they like to the agenda at the beginning of each meeting. The moderator and the TSC cannot veto or remove items.

No binding votes on TSC agenda items can take place without a quorum of TSC members present in the meeting. Quorum is achieved when more than half of the TSC members (minus non-attending members) are present.

The TSC may invite persons or representatives from certain projects to participate in a non-voting capacity.

The moderator is responsible for summarizing the discussion of each agenda item and sending it as a pull request after the meeting.

Consensus Seeking Process

The TSC follows a Consensus Seeking decision making model.

When an agenda item has appeared to reach a consensus, the moderator will ask “Does anyone object?” as a final call for dissent from the consensus.

If an agenda item cannot reach a consensus, a TSC member can call for either a closing vote or a vote to table the issue to the next meeting. The call for a vote must be approved by a majority of the TSC or else the discussion will continue. Simple majority wins.

This work is a derivative of YUI Contributor Model and the Node.js Project Governance Model.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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