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Decision-making rules

Introduction

In October 2019, the BIDS community voted to ratify a governance structure and to elect five members as a Steering Group to oversee the development and adoption of the standard.

The document outlining our governance structure is hosted on the BIDS website: https://bids.neuroimaging.io/governance.html

In the following, we list the current members of subgroups detailed in the BIDS governance.

Steering Group

Current and past members of the steering group can be found in the BIDS governance.

Maintainers Group

Current and past members of the maintainers group can be found in the BIDS governance, and in the Maintainers Guide.

BEP Leads Group

Leaders of BIDS Extension Proposals are listed in the table of BEPs.

Contributors Group

Contributors are listed in the Contributors appendix of the BIDS specification. Contributors who have not yet entered their name into this list are encouraged to edit the Contributors wiki page according to the instructions listed there.

Other groups

The following groups are not described in detail. Please learn more about these groups from the BIDS governance.

  • BEP working groups
  • Advisory Group
  • BIDS Community

GitHub Workflow

For the day-to-day work on the BIDS specification, we currently abide by the following rules with the intention to:

  • Strive for consensus.
  • Promote open discussions.
  • Minimize the administrative burden.
  • Provide a path for when consensus cannot be made.
  • Grow the community.
  • Maximize the bus factor of the project.

The rules outlined below are inspired by the lazy consensus system used in the Apache Foundation and heavily depends on GitHub Pull Request Review system.

Rules

  1. Every modification of the specification (including a correction of a typo, adding a new Contributor, an extension adding support for a new data type, or others) or proposal to release a new version needs to be done via a Pull Request (PR) to the Repository.
  2. Anyone can open a PR (this action is not limited to Contributors).
  3. PRs adding new Contributors may also add their GitHub names to the CODEOWNERS file.
  4. A PR is eligible to be merged if and only if these conditions are met:
    1. The last commit is at least 5 working days old to allow the community to evaluate it.
    2. The PR features at least two Reviews that Approve the PR from Contributors of which neither is the author of the PR. The reviews need to be made after the last commit in the PR (equivalent to Stale review dismissal option on GitHub).
    3. Does not feature any Reviews that Request changes.
    4. Does not feature "WIP" in the title (Work in Progress).
    5. Passes all automated tests.
    6. Is not proposing a new release or has been approved by at least one Maintainer (that is, PRs proposing new releases need to be approved by at least one Maintainer).
  5. A Maintainer can merge any PR - even if it's not eligible to merge according to Rule 4.
  6. Any Contributor can Review a PR and Request changes. If a Contributor Requests changes they need to provide an explanation what changes should be added and justification of their importance. Reviews requesting changes can also be used to request more time to review a PR.
  7. A Contributor that Requested changes can Dismiss their own review or Approve changes added by the Contributor who opened the PR.
  8. If the author of a PR and Contributor who provided Review that Requests changes cannot find a solution that would lead to the Contributor dismissing their review or accepting the changes the Review can be Dismissed with a vote or by a Maintainer. Rules governing voting:
    1. A Vote can be triggered by any Contributor, but only after 5 working days from the time a Review Requesting changes has been raised and in case a Vote has been triggered previously no sooner than 15 working days since its conclusion.
    2. Only Contributors can vote, each contributor gets one vote.
    3. A Vote ends after 5 working days or when all Contributors have voted (whichever comes first).
    4. A Vote freezes the PR - no new commits or Reviews Requesting changes can be added to it while a vote is ongoing. If a commit is accidentally made during that period it should be reverted.
    5. The quorum for a Vote is 30% of all Contributors.
    6. The outcome of the Vote is decided based on a simple majority.

Comments

  1. Researchers preparing academic manuscripts describing work that has been merged into this repository are strongly encouraged to invite all Maintainers as co-authors as a form of appreciation for their work.
  2. There are no restrictions on how the content of the PR is prepared. For example it is perfectly fine for a PR to consist of content developed by a group of experts over an extended period of time via in person meetings and online collaborations using a Google Document.
  3. To facilitate triage of incoming PR you can subscribe to notifications for new PRs proposing changes to specific files. To do this add your GitHub name next to the file you want to subscribe to in the CODEOWNERS. This way you will be ask to review each relevant PR. Please mind that lack of your review will not prevent the PR from being merged so if you think the PR needs your attention, please review it promptly or request more time via Request changes.
  4. Releases are triggered the same way as any other change - via a PR.