# distribution/reference Project Governance
Distribution [Code of Conduct](./CODE-OF-CONDUCT.md) can be found here.
For specific guidance on practical contribution steps please
see our [CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md) guide.
## Maintainership
There are different types of maintainers, with different responsibilities, but
all maintainers have 3 things in common:
1) They share responsibility in the project's success.
2) They have made a long-term, recurring time investment to improve the project.
3) They spend that time doing whatever needs to be done, not necessarily what
is the most interesting or fun.
Maintainers are often under-appreciated, because their work is harder to appreciate.
It's easy to appreciate a really cool and technically advanced feature. It's harder
to appreciate the absence of bugs, the slow but steady improvement in stability,
or the reliability of a release process. But those things distinguish a good
project from a great one.
## Reviewers
A reviewer is a core role within the project.
They share in reviewing issues and pull requests and their LGTM counts towards the
required LGTM count to merge a code change into the project.
Reviewers are part of the organization but do not have write access.
Becoming a reviewer is a core aspect in the journey to becoming a maintainer.
## Adding maintainers
Maintainers are first and foremost contributors that have shown they are
committed to the long term success of a project. Contributors wanting to become
maintainers are expected to be deeply involved in contributing code, pull
request review, and triage of issues in the project for more than three months.
Just contributing does not make you a maintainer, it is about building trust
with the current maintainers of the project and being a person that they can
depend on and trust to make decisions in the best interest of the project.
Periodically, the existing maintainers curate a list of contributors that have
shown regular activity on the project over the prior months. From this list,
maintainer candidates are selected and proposed in a pull request or a
maintainers communication channel.
After a candidate has been announced to the maintainers, the existing
maintainers are given five business days to discuss the candidate, raise
objections and cast their vote. Votes may take place on the communication
channel or via pull request comment. Candidates must be approved by at least 66%
of the current maintainers by adding their vote on the mailing list. The
reviewer role has the same process but only requires 33% of current maintainers.
Only maintainers of the repository that the candidate is proposed for are
allowed to vote.
If a candidate is approved, a maintainer will contact the candidate to invite
the candidate to open a pull request that adds the contributor to the
MAINTAINERS file. The voting process may take place inside a pull request if a
maintainer has already discussed the candidacy with the candidate and a
maintainer is willing to be a sponsor by opening the pull request. The candidate
becomes a maintainer once the pull request is merged.
## Stepping down policy
Life priorities, interests, and passions can change. If you're a maintainer but
feel you must remove yourself from the list, inform other maintainers that you
intend to step down, and if possible, help find someone to pick up your work.
At the very least, ensure your work can be continued where you left off.
After you've informed other maintainers, create a pull request to remove
yourself from the MAINTAINERS file.
## Removal of inactive maintainers
Similar to the procedure for adding new maintainers, existing maintainers can
be removed from the list if they do not show significant activity on the
project. Periodically, the maintainers review the list of maintainers and their
activity over the last three months.
If a maintainer has shown insufficient activity over this period, a neutral
person will contact the maintainer to ask if they want to continue being
a maintainer. If the maintainer decides to step down as a maintainer, they
open a pull request to be removed from the MAINTAINERS file.
If the maintainer wants to remain a maintainer, but is unable to perform the
required duties they can be removed with a vote of at least 66% of the current
maintainers. In this case, maintainers should first propose the change to
maintainers via the maintainers communication channel, then open a pull request
for voting. The voting period is five business days. The voting pull request
should not come as a surpise to any maintainer and any discussion related to
performance must not be discussed on the pull request.
## How are decisions made?
Docker distribution is an open-source project with an open design philosophy.
This means that the repository is the source of truth for EVERY aspect of the
project, including its philosophy, design, road map, and APIs. *If it's part of
the project, it's in the repo. If it's in the repo, it's part of the project.*
As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the repository. An
implementation change is a change to the source code. An API change is a change
to the API specification. A philosophy change is a change to the philosophy
manifesto, and so on.
All decisions affecting distribution, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:
* Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this.
* Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this.
* Step 3: Merge or refuse the pull request. Who does this depends on the nature
of the pull request and which areas of the project it affects.
## Helping contributors with the DCO
The [DCO or `Sign your work`](./CONTRIBUTING.md#sign-your-work)
requirement is not intended as a roadblock or speed bump.
Some contributors are not as familiar with `git`, or have used a web
based editor, and thus asking them to `git commit --amend -s` is not the best
way forward.
In this case, maintainers can update the commits based on clause (c) of the DCO.
The most trivial way for a contributor to allow the maintainer to do this, is to
add a DCO signature in a pull requests's comment, or a maintainer can simply
note that the change is sufficiently trivial that it does not substantially
change the existing contribution - i.e., a spelling change.
When you add someone's DCO, please also add your own to keep a log.
## I'm a maintainer. Should I make pull requests too?
Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
made through a pull request.
## Conflict Resolution
If you have a technical dispute that you feel has reached an impasse with a
subset of the community, any contributor may open an issue, specifically
calling for a resolution vote of the current core maintainers to resolve the
dispute. The same voting quorums required (2/3) for adding and removing
maintainers will apply to conflict resolution.
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