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Governance

This document describes the governance model for the PDB Operator project.

Principles​

  • Open: the project is open source and welcomes contributions from anyone
  • Transparent: all decisions are made in public (GitHub issues, discussions, PRs)
  • Merit-based: contributions and demonstrated commitment determine advancement in roles

Roles​

Contributors​

Anyone who contributes to the project (code, documentation, issues, reviews).

Reviewers​

Contributors who have demonstrated:

  • Understanding of the codebase and project goals
  • Consistent, high-quality code reviews
  • Active participation over a sustained period

Reviewers can approve PRs but cannot merge without a maintainer's approval.

How to become a reviewer: Nominated by a maintainer, approved by majority of maintainers.

Maintainers​

Maintainers have full commit access and are responsible for:

  • Setting the project direction and roadmap
  • Reviewing and merging pull requests
  • Managing releases
  • Triaging issues
  • Ensuring the project adheres to its governance and code of conduct

Current maintainers are listed in MAINTAINERS.md.

How to become a maintainer: Nominated by an existing maintainer, approved by supermajority (2/3) of current maintainers. Candidates should have been active reviewers for at least 3 months.

Decision Making​

  • Lazy consensus: a proposal is considered accepted if no maintainer objects within 72 hours
  • Voting: for contentious issues, each maintainer gets one vote. Simple majority wins, except governance changes which require supermajority (2/3)
  • Conflict resolution: if consensus cannot be reached, the lead maintainer makes the final decision

Changes to Governance​

Changes require:

  • A pull request with the proposed changes
  • Supermajority (2/3) approval from maintainers
  • A minimum review period of 7 days