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Abstract

The purpose of this document is to formalize the governance process used by the Zarr project, to clarify how decisions are made and how the various elements of our community interact.

This is a consensus-based community project. Anyone with an interest in the project can join the community, contribute to the project design, and participate in the decision making process. This document describes how that participation takes place, how to find consensus, and how deadlocks are resolved.

Roles And Responsibilities

The Project

The Zarr project consists of the core Zarr specification and the various implementations of Zarr in different programming languages that are hosted within this organization. Other community implementations exist but do not follow this governance process.

The Community

The Zarr community consists of anyone using or working with the project in any way.

Contributors

A community member can become a contributor by interacting directly with the project in concrete ways, such as:

  • proposing, discussing, or reviewing a change to the code, documentation, or specification via a GitHub pull request to any https://github.com/zarr-developers repository;
  • reporting a GitHub issue to any https://github.com/zarr-developers repository;
  • discussing examples or usage issues under the #zarr tag on StackOverflow (like "How do I do X in Zarr?").

among other possibilities. Any community member can become a contributor, and all are encouraged to do so. By contributing to the project, community members can directly help to shape its future.

Potential contributors are encouraged to read the Contributing Guide as well as the CODE OF CONDUCT.

Anyone who has recently engaged with the project in these concrete ways, in compliance with the Contributing Guide and Code of Conduct, is considered a contributor and can request to be added to the relevant GitHub team. Alternatively, any existing member of the community can invite a contributor to join.

Core developers

Core developers are community members that have demonstrated continued commitment to the project through ongoing contributions to the specification, governance, and / or implementions of Zarr. The have shown they can be trusted to maintain the project with care. Each implementation has its own set of core developers. Becoming a core developer allows contributors to merge approved pull requests, cast votes for and against merging a pull-request, and be involved in deciding major changes to the API, and thereby more easily carry on with their project related activities. Core developers appear as organization members on the Zarr GitHub organization. All core developers belong to the @zarr-developers/core-devs GitHub team either directly or via one or more implementation-specific sub-teams. Core developers are expected to review code contributions while adhering to the core developer guide. New core developers can be nominated by any existing core developer. For details on that process see our core developer guide.

Zarr Steering Council

The Zarr Steering Council (ZSC) members are core developers who have additional responsibilities to ensure the smooth running of the project. ZSC members are expected to participate in strategic planning, approve changes to the governance model, and make decisions about funding granted to the project itself. (Funding to community members is theirs to pursue and manage). The purpose of the ZSC is to ensure smooth progress from the big-picture perspective. Changes that impact the full project require analysis informed by long experience with both the project and the larger ecosystem. When the core developer community (including the ZSC members) fails to reach such a consensus in a reasonable timeframe, the SC is the entity that resolves the issue.

Members of the steering council also have the "owner" role within the zarr-developers GitHub organization and are ultimately responsible for managing the zarr-developers GitHub account, the @zarr_dev twitter account, the Zarr website, and other similar Zarr-owned resources.

The steering council is currently fixed in size to five members. This number may be increased in the future, but will always be an odd number to ensure a simple majority vote outcome is always possible. The initial steering council of Zarr consists of

The SC membership is revisited every January. SC members who do not actively engage with the SC duties are expected to resign. New members are added by nomination by a core developer. Nominees should have demonstrated long-term, continued commitment to the project and its mission and values. A nomination will result in discussion that cannot take more than a month and then admission to the SC by consensus. During that time deadlocked votes of the SC will be postponed until the new member has joined and another vote can be held.

The Zarr steering council may be contacted at zarr-steering-council@googlegroups.com, or via the @zarr-developers/steering-council GitHub team.

Zarr Implementation Council (ZIC)

The ZSC will invite Zarr implementations to participate in the management of the Zarr specification through the Zarr Implementation Council (ZIC). Implementations will be selected based on maturity of implementation as well as the activity of the developer community. Preference will be given to open source and open process implementations. Multiple implementations in a single programming language may be invited, or such implementations could choose to work together as a single community.

The current list of implementations which are participating in this process are (in alphabetical order)

The Core developers of each implementation will select one representative to the ZIC. It is up to each implementation to determine its own process for selecting its representatives.

This member will represent that implementation in decisions regarding the Zarr Specification and other Zarr-wide contexts which require input from implementations.

An additional representative should also be selected to act as an alternate for when the primary representative is not reachable.

Continued membership on the ZIC is dependent on timely feedback and votes on relevant issues. The ZSC also reserves the right to remove implementations from the council.

Decision Making Process

Decisions about the future of the project are made through discussion with all members of the community. All non-sensitive project management discussion takes place on the issue trackers of the https://github.com/zarr-developers repositories. Occasionally, sensitive discussion may occur via a private message via the GitHub team: https://github.com/orgs/zarr-developers/teams/core-devs

Decisions should be made in accordance with the mission and values of the Zarr project.

Zarr uses a “consensus-seeking” process for making decisions. The group tries to find a resolution that has no open objections among core developers. Core developers are expected to distinguish between fundamental objections to a proposal and minor perceived flaws that they can live with and not hold up the decision-making process for the latter. If no option can be found without objections, the decision is escalated to the SC, which will use consensus to come to a resolution. In the unlikely event that there is still a deadlock, the proposal will move forward if it has the support of a simple majority of the ZSC.

Decisions (in addition to adding core developers and SC membership as above) are made according to the following rules:

  • Minor documentation changes, such as typo fixes, or addition / correction of a sentence, require approval by a core developer and no disagreement or requested changes by a core developer on the issue or pull request page (lazy consensus). Core developers are expected to give "reasonable time" after approval and before merging for others to give their opinion on the pull request if they’re not confident others would agree, where "reasonable time" is likely one working day.

  • Code changes and major documentation changes require agreement by one core developer and no disagreement or requested changes by a core developer on the issue or pull-request page (lazy consensus). For all changes of this type, core developers are expected to give "reasonable time" after approval and before merging for others to weigh in on the pull request in its final state, where "reasonable time" is likely a few working days.

  • Changes to APIs require a dedicated issue on the related issue tracker, e.g. zarr-python, and follow the decision-making process outlined above, though "reasonable time" is likely extended to at least a week.

  • Changes to the specification follow the ZEP process. Please read ZEP0000 for details and instructions to submit a new ZEP.

  • Changes to this governance model or our mission, vision, and values require a dedicated issue on our issue tracker and follow the ZEP process, with "reasonable time" being at least two weeks. However, if there is unanimous agreement from core developers on the change, it can move forward faster.

If an objection is raised on a lazy consensus, the proposer can appeal to the community and core developers and the change can be approved or rejected by escalating to the SC.