Our model starts with the "straw man" that Mark Norton had posted at the Sakai Confluence site (http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/STAD/Governance+Outline+v0.1+JH)
The Sakai Software Foundation is formed primarily to;
- provide a foundation for open, collaborative software development projects around the Sakai code base by supplying hardware, communication between coordinating and governance bodies of the Sakai community open source project, and the business infrastructure needed to support it;
- create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used for the project's benefit, as well as provide a means for individual volunteers to be sheltered from legal suits directed at the Foundation's projects;
Heading up the Sakai Software Foundation is the Sakai Project Board;
- Acts as overall community coordination;
- Setting overall directions for Sakai, providing clear, neutral, and sustainable ownership of code, trademarks, and domains. Allocating Board resources (whatever they are)
- Establish an accepted decision-making structure for essential activities, acting as a court of last resort for resolving disputes anywhere in project, with local 'lazy' consensus is the goal. Most disputes should be solved in the Development Groups.
- Ensure that, as Sakai grows, it remains a level playing field for all.
Under the Sakai Project Board, there should be several subcommittees with specific missions as follows. Each subcommittee has their own simple, largely informational charter passed by Board (see current charter) - with a sunset clause, some form of review at intervals
Public Relations/Marketing -
- Maintains sakaiproject.org
- Promotional material, interviews, speeches, and other activities to grow Sakai and the Sakai market.
- Handles the biannual user groups conference planning and delivery
- Handles requests and interactions with Sakai commercial partners
- Act as the voice of Sakai for official announcements, press releases, and other communications.
Kernel Project Development Group
- Maintenance of the integrity of the Sakai codebase
- Overall Technical direction - providing technical leadership in planning, designing and executing the central Sakai software offerings;
- Encouraging best practices in development (unit testing, better quality, UI);
- Release engineering, Quality assurance
- Kernel development, certification
- Tech support, of members and larger community; Sakaipedia, jira, confluence
- Technical, second level support for Development Groups
User Support/Pedagogy/Adoption
- develop tools and facilities that promote good practice in teaching and learning;
- support users of Sakai and who want to assist these users in the realization of good T&L practice
- research interests in what kinds of practices encourage deeper learning
- generates and checks Sakai documentation for accuracy
Tool development
- Project initiation, recruitment of collaborators if desired, integration with Sakai codebase and UI
- Technical product support
- Dispute resolution between team members
Members of the Board
Project board members are composed of chairs from the subcommittees; with possibility of inclusion in elections of any other individuals the Board deems valuable; bootstrapped from existing Board and additions (few) at the June conference, with limited terms for individuals (2 years, can be returned by vote). Nominations can come from within the subcommittees, or in the case of additional members, from the board or from SEPP members.