Official Policies

This page contains the official policies of the SharpOS project as defined by the project governance. Do not edit this page. Changes to these policies are made via the SharpOS governance (currently the provisional governance board). All policies on this page should reflect the decisions of the board as evidenced by the sharpos-board mailing list archives.

Provisional Government Board

This initial policy was written by William Lahti (as a long-time contributor and part of the initial membership drafted for this board) to enable creation of a provisional governance board. It is the only official policy which was not voted upon. This policy is amendable by the board which it creates. The project created the Provisional Government Board (PGB) to begin formally setting up a governmental model for the SharpOS project. The board created should eventually create more permanent governmental structures which replace or complement itself. If the provisional board should become permanent, then it is no longer bound by this policy, and a new policy must be created and proposed, and a motion created for adopting it. The provisional board has the highest authority to make decisions regarding the project, including (but not limited to) the administration, creative direction, and official policies of the project. It also has the highest authority for resolving project-related conflicts among project contributors. Finally, the provisional board has the sole right to create and amend official policy of the SharpOS project. All changes to official policy (as evidenced by the sharpos-board mailing list archives) should be reflected on the SharpOS Trac wiki.

Membership

The membership of the provisional board shall be posted on the SharpOS Trac wiki and maintained by a board member who is delegated with the task. Further members can be added to the Provisional Government Board via motion.

Discussion and Voting

The provisional board will have it’s own mailing list (sharpos-board at lists.sf.net) where votes will occur. Votes come in the form of motions, and each motion must be seconded before voting may occur. Each message containing a motion should be prefixed with ‘[MOTION]’. The board may also use the list for discussion, but only for obviously non-controversial, already publically-discussed, or board-internal topics. The archives of messages posted to the mailing list will be public, and available at the SharpOS SourceForge?.net project page.

Voting Thresholds

A majority vote (of the entire group) is required for a motion to pass. A motion will be decided upon when more than half of the members have voted or thirty days have passed since it was posted. A motion may be marked (in the subject line) as [Express], which is a request to complete the vote in one week or less. A motion can also be marked with [ASAP], which implies that the vote should be completed within 3 days time. If an express or ASAP motion is passed and less than half of the board members have voted, than it may be voted upon again (via a new motion) as a normal vote (with a 30 day vote period as listed above, no Express or ASAP designation may be used at this point). In this way, decisions decided using the Express or ASAP marking may be repealed. To prevent an express or ASAP decision from coming into effect (due to issues which have not been discussed by the board), any board member may invoke this termination clause along with a terse sentence describing the reasoning for termination. Once the express/ASAP vote has been terminated, the decision may not come into effect even if the motion passes. However, if/when the motion is reposted for vote once the proper discussion has happened, the motion may not be terminated for the same reason.