Governance

The DSpace Governance establishes the

  • Principles and goals for the project
  • Strategic direction and product roadmap
  • Accountability
  • Sustainability plan
  • Management decision framework
  • Means of conducting operations

Governance is based on a representative, community-based membership model incrementally rewarding members who have made the greatest commitments to the project.

Governance Roles

Leadership Group

The Leadership Group is made up of members that contribute annually to the project, along with representatives from the DSpace Community at large who are particularly committed to the Project, including Service Providers.

Eligibility to serve in the Leadership Group is determined based on the membership levels as follows:

  • Platinum - 1 seat per member
  • Gold - 1 seat for every 2 members
  • Silver - 1 seats for every 4 members
  • Bronze - 1 seat for every 8 members

The Leadership group will also benefit from the participation of:

  • 2 Members nominated by the community at large and voted by the Members
  • Representatives from Registered Service Providers
  • Ex-officio and/or emeritus members

The Leadership Group approves the overall priorities and strategic direction of the project by:

  • Approving the annual budget allocation and any modifications
  • Approving the product roadmap
  • Approving the strategic direction
  • Nominating and electing Steering Group members
  • Voting on key decisions presented by Steering Group
  • Helping to raise funds and secure other resources on behalf of the project

The Leaders are elected for a 1-year term and there are no term limits. The wiki lists the current members of the Leadership Group.

 

 

Steering Group

The Steering Group is nominated and elected by the Leadership Group and members are chosen among the Leaders. The Steering Group is composed of 9 Members elected for a 3-year term and it provides project oversight and ensures that the priorities of the Leadership Group and members are met, by:

  • Providing strategic direction to the Project
  • Recommending annual budget allocations
  • Presenting key decisions to the Leadership Group for discussion and approval
  • Raising funds and securing other resources on behalf of the Project
  • Overseeing project operations

Current members of the Steering Group.

Community Liaison

The Community Liaison is someone from a member institution who has been chosen to represent their organization for the purpose of important communications.  For example, when an institution is asked to vote in a project governance election, the Community Liaison will be the designated individual who will cast the vote, based on a consultation with local project stakeholders. The Community Liaison is someone we expect to have an awareness of the status of the project so that they can help their institution make informed decisions.

Committers

DSpace Committers have autonomous control over the code and are also the primary support team for DSpace. The primary responsibilities of Committers are:

  • Maintain the codebase; Committers are the only individuals who can actively change/commit to the codebase
  • Review all code contributions/changes to ensure stability, etc
  • Merge/accept community code contributions
  • Help to resolve bugs or security issues within codebase
  • Help to provide ongoing support to community developers and users (via IRC, mailing lists, etc.)
  • Perform and manage new releases based on the roadmap.

Anyone may be nominated as a Committer by anyone else. Typically, nominations are made by existing Committers on the basis of sustained contribution to DSpace that indicates an ability to fulfill Committer responsibilities. Examples of such contributions are participation in discussions on the DSpace mailing lists, IRC, participation in developer meetings, reporting bugs, help with testing, and contribution of code via pull requests. Only existing Committers may vote to add a nominated person to the Committers group.

The list of current Committers can be found at https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+Committers

Working Groups

Our list of Working Groups and Interest Groups is always changing, based on the current strategic goals of the project.

For a list of the current Working/Interest Groups please visit https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/Project+Governance

Governance Benefits

DSpace members are granted governance rights commensurate with their financial allocation to the project. The following table shows the governance-related benefits for DSpace contributors.

Image of DSpace Membership levels