This document describes the leadership qualifications, obligations, and responsibilities of OASIS TC Open Repository Maintainers.

TC Open Repository Maintainers (a role also called “committers” in some open source projects) are recognized and trusted experts who serve to implement community goals and consensus design preferences. They are selected not only by demonstration of a proven record of making technical contributions accepted by the community, but by reputation for fairness and impartiality, seeking to advance the community’s agenda rather than their own. They demonstrate commitment to the success of the TC Open Repository’s sub-projects and provide technical leadership that is broadly respected by the repository participants. Maintainers should also be skillful negotiators and mediators, capable of moving past community dissent to embrace compromises that empower and motivate all parties.

At TC Open Repository startup, at least one Maintainer is identified by the associated Technical Committee to provide this technical leadership. In cooperation with the community, the initial Maintainer(s) and the TC may select additional Maintainer(s) to share responsibilities for the TC Open Repository.

Maintainers are members of the repository’s Write Access Team(s), and exercise a range of editorial responsibilities to keep the community focused upon key development goals, keep repository assets clearly identified and organized, and help keep conversations on topic. At the technical level, they have responsibility for assigning and closing issues, creating and associating milestones, creating releases, designating a default branch, creating and applying labels, initiating conversations on pull requests, merging and closing pull requests, assigning evaluation of a pull request, resolving merge conflicts, etc.

Among other duties of the TC Open Repository’s Maintainer(s):

  • Maintainers should keep an up-to-date record in the Repository’s README.md document for contact information of all Maintainers, including name, email address, GitHub username, and (optionally) corporate affiliation. The two other repository startup files presenting boilerplate content (CONTRIBUTING.md and LICENSE) should not be altered except by OASIS Staff.

  • When relevant, a Maintainer should coordinate with TC Open Repository Administration and with any other party or parties who may be expected to play a central role in initial creation of repository content.

  • The Maintainer(s) should ensure that when a pull request is submitted, the request is properly evaluated, e.g., ensuring that an associated CLA is on file, clarifying with a comment in the pull request conversation why a request is closed, etc.

  • Maintainers should take care to uphold the OASIS commitment to archival permanence; they should not delete any contributions made to the TC Open Repository.

  • Maintainers should also take care to ensure that Git/GitHub methods and workflows used to merge pull requests, resolve merge conflicts, and manage branches do not delete data or obscure revision metadata (e.g., “git rebase”, “git push –force”, “git reset”), since all data and revision history metadata are a vital part of the public record of contributors’ actions over time.


Contact

Please send any feedback or questions to TC Open Repository Administration at repository-admin@oasis-open.org.