User:ScoopGracie/PMC/Proposed bylaws

THESE ARE NOT THE BYLAWS! I'm running for PMC, and these are my suggestion. If you have any feedback, please let me know!

Preamble

The mission of the Apertium project is to collaboratively develop free/open-source machine translation for as many languages as possible, and in particular:

1. To give everyone free, unlimited access to the best possible machine-translation technologies.
2. To maintain a modular, documented, open platform for machine translation and other human language processing tasks
3. To favour the interchange and reuse of existing linguistic data.
4. To make integration with other free/open-source technologies easier.
5. To radically guarantee the reproducibility of machine translation and natural language processing research

And additionally:

1. To promote the usage of free and open source software.
2. To help combat gender and racial bias in technology.
3. To help support and preserve less widespread languages.

Roles and responsibilities

Users

1. The most important participants in the project are people who use Apertium. The majority of our developers start out as users and guide their development efforts from the user's perspective
2. Users contribute to the Apertium project by providing feedback to developers in the form of bug reports and feature suggestions. As well, users participate in the Apertium community by helping other users.

Developers

3. Developers are volunteers who are contributing time, code, documentation, or resources to Apertium.
4. For the purposes of these bylaws, a Developer is anyone who has submitted at least one pull request or commit to any Apertium repository in the past twenty-four weeks (168 days, or approximately six months).
5. The Developers of Apertium constitute the Assembly of Developers of Apertium.
6. The project's Developers are responsible for the project's technical management.
7. The Assembly of Developers elects the Project Management Committee of Apertium every even-numbered year in February or whenever a vacancy occurs, whether by resignation, or loss of Developer status.
8. The number of members of the Assembly of Developers of Apertium has no limit.
9. The President of the Project Management Committee will, immediately after a new Project Management Committee begins functioning, nominate a President of the Assembly of Developers, who must be a Developer and may not be a member of the Project Management Committee or of the latest election board. This President will be confirmed by a vote of the Assembly of Developers, and may be referred to as the President of Apertium.
10. The Assembly of Developers decides only on subjects proposed by the Project Management Committee.
11. Once submitted to it, the decisions of the Assembly of Developers are final and binding and cannot be overturned, except as explicitly noted in these Bylaws.
12. One tenth of the Assembly of Developers may decide to attempt to overturn a decision of the Assembly of Developers or Project Management Committee, and the resolution must be passed by three fourths of the Developers.

Project Management Committee

13. The Project Management Committee is formed by seven members of the Assembly designated by it to make the day to day decisions.
14. The Project Management Committee is headed by a President and has six more members, one of whom will act as Secretary and another as Treasurer.
15. All members of the Project Management Committee must be at least thirteen years of age, and the Treasurer must be at least eighteen years of age.
16. The responsibilities of the Project Management Committee include
1. Deciding what is distributed as products of Apertium project. In particular, all releases must be approved by the PMC.
2. Maintaining the project's shared resources, including the codebase repository, mailing lists, websites.
3. Speaking on behalf of the project; although, the PMC could give the right to speak on behalf of Apertium to a member of the Assembly of Developers.
4. Resolving licence disputes regarding products of the project.
5. Maintaining these bylaws and other guidelines of the project.
6. Promoting the active engagement of Apertium in larger free/open-source initiatives
7. Attracting external funds to further the objectives of the Apertium project
8. Deciding how to distribute the funds the Apertium project may get as the result of participating in externally-funded initiatives
17. The Project Management Committee votes on all of its decisions.
18. The Project Management Committee has the obligation to submit to the Assembly of Developers the decisions that affect the work of the half or more of the members of the Assembly of Developers, being able to consult in other subjects if believed necessary.
19. Decisions of the PMC are accepted or rejected by the President of the Assembly of Committers, but the PMC may pass a decision despite rejection by the President of the Assembly of Developers with the agreement of five members.
20. Decisions of the Project Management Committee made other than in consultation with the Assembly are immediately filed in a public diary. The Assembly may overturn a PMC decision as described in Bylaw 12.
21. The secretary of the Project Management Committee has the obligation of preparing the diary and presenting it to the Assembly of Developers.
22. While the Treasurer is responsible for financial management, all actions must be approved by a PMC vote.

Bylaw Violation Court of Apertium

23. In the case of an alleged violation of the Bylaws by any Developer, a temporary Bylaw Violation Court shall be established.
24. The Bylaw Violation Court of Apertium shall consist of seven Developers chosen at random, who must not be members of the Project Management Committee or include the accused Developer.
25. All members of the Bylaw Violation Court shall agree to a Pledge of Non-bias, as follows:
    I, <name>, hereby pledge that I will not act in my own personal interest, in the interest of the accused Developer, or in the interest of the accuser(s), but in the interest of the Apertium project as a whole. My decisions will not be biased based on who the accused or accusing Developer(s) is/are.
26. The Bylaw Violation Court of Apertium shall decide by consensus if the accused Developer has violated the bylaws, and may take action against the Developer up to, and including, permanent loss of Developer status.

Election of the Project Management Committee

27. The Assembly of Developers will elect a new Project Management Committee as follows:
    1. An Election Board of 3 developers (with at least one substitute member; ideally with one substitute each) will run the election. Election Board membership is a volunteer position on a first-come first-served basis.
    2. The Project Management Committee will provide the Election Board with all the information needed to run the election
    3. Any Developer may run for member of the Project Management Committee
    4. Any Developer may run for president of the Project Management Committee
    5. Candidates cannot be part of the Election Board
    6. When an election is called, the Election Board will publish a census of Developers with right to vote.
    7. There will be 7 days for candidates to member and president to come forward
    8. The Election Board will proclaim the candidates to President and to Members of the Project Management Committee
    9. Once candidates are proclaimed, Developers with the right to vote will send a ballot with:
       1. The name of a candidate to president of the Project Management Committee, and
       2. The name of up to four candidates to members of the Project Management Committee
    10. There will be 7 days to send the ballots
    11. The Election Board will proclaim as President the candidate to president having received most votes for President and as members the six candidates to member having received the most votes as members
    12. The new Project Management Committee will start to function 48 hours after being proclaimed.

Amendments

28. To begin the bylaw amendment process, one tenth of the Assembly of Developers must submit a proposal to the PMC.
29. If the PMC accepts an amendment, the Assembly of Developers shall vote on the amendment.
30. If half plus one of the Assembly of Developers accept the amendment, it shall become part of these Bylaws.

Transitional provisions

31. Bylaw 12 does not apply to the acceptance of these bylaws.
32. Bylaw 12 does not apply to decisions made by the Project Management Committee or Assembly of Committers under the previous Bylaws. These may only be overturned by a replacement decision made using the standard process under these Bylaws.