Governance

The Selenium Project wants as much as possible to operate using procedures that are fair, open, inviting, and ultimately good for the community. For that reason, we find it valuable to codify some of the ways that the Project goes about its day-to-day business. We want to make sure that no matter who you are, you have the opportunity to contribute to Selenium. We want to make sure that no corporation can exert undue influence on the community or hold the Project hostage. And likewise, we want to make sure that corporations which benefit from Selenium are also incentivized to give back. This document describes how various types of contributors work within the Selenium project.

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Users are community members who have a need for the project. Anyone can be a User; there are no special requirements. Common User contributions include:
  • Evangelizing the project (e.g., display a link on a website and raise awareness through word-of-mouth)
  • Informing strengths and weaknesses from a new user perspective (e.g., raising a bug as a GitHub issue, proposing a new feature)
  • Providing moral support (a "thank you" goes a long way)
Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often become more and more involved. Such Users may find themselves becoming Contributors, as described in the next section.

Contributors

Contributors are community members who contribute in concrete ways to the project, most often in the form of code and/or documentation. Anyone can become a Contributor, and contributions can take many forms, e.g.:
  • Help other users through any of the communication channels made for that purpose.
  • Triage GitHub issues.
  • Organize Selenium meetups.
  • Organize and collaborate in Selenium Conferences.
There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements, and no selection process. Some Contributors might have some basic privileges to the GitHub repos, based on their type of contribution (e.g., close an issue after triaging it).

Contributors have read-only access to source code and submit changes via pull requests. Contributor pull requests have their contribution reviewed and merged by a Technical Leadership Committee (TLC) member or a Committer. TLC members and Committers work with Contributors to review their code and prepare it for merging.

As Contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, their profile within, and commitment to, the community will increase. At some stage, they may find themselves being nominated for the Committer role by an existing Committer or TLC member.

Project Committers

Committers are community members who have shown that they are committed to the continued development of the project through ongoing engagement with the community. Committers are given push access to the project's GitHub repos where they contribute to.

Committers:

  • Should bring their proposals for large changes to the project's code first to a GitHub issue, and all relevant committers should be pinged so they can weigh in on the discussion if desired.
  • Debates between committers about whether code should be merged should happen in GitHub pull requests to keep the project decision history.
  • In general any committer can review and merge a pull request. Committers should only merge code they are qualified to review, which might entail pinging another committer who has greater ownership over a specific code area.
  • May label and close issues.

Becoming a committer

  • One must have shown a willingness and ability to participate in the project as a team player.
  • Committers are expected to be respectful of every community member and to work collaboratively in the spirit of inclusion.
  • Have submitted sufficient substantive contributions to one or more of the different projects (IDE, Docker-Selenium, Selenium, Site & Docs). For technical contributions, enough weight is present and requires little effort to accept because it is well documented and tested. Normally 10 substantive contributions are needed to qualify as a candidate to be a committer, but there could be cases where the contributions are substantial enough that a fewer amount is also acceptable.
New Committers can be nominated by any existing Committer or TLC member. Once they have been nominated, the TLC members will seek a decision based on a Consensus Seeking Process.

It is important to recognize that having the Committer role is a privilege, not a right. That privilege must be earned and once earned, it can be removed by the TLC members by a standard TLC motion. However, under normal circumstances the Committer role will exist for as long as the Committer wishes to continue engaging with the project.

A Committer who shows an above-average level of contribution to the project, particularly with respect to its strategic direction and long-term health, may be nominated to become a TLC member, described below.

Process for Adding Committers

  1. Add the GitHub user to relevant GitHub team:
    • selenium-committers for the main Selenium repo
    • selenium-ide for the main Selenium IDE repo
    • documentation for the website and documentation repo
    • docker-owners for the Docker-Selenium repo
  2. Invite to Slack team chat room (selenium-committers)
  3. Tweet congratulations to the new committer from the SeleniumHQ Twitter account
To see the list of current Committers please click here.

Technical Leadership Committee (TLC)

The technical decisions and roadmap of the Selenium project are governed by a Technical Leadership Committee (TLC) which is responsible for a high-level technical guidance of the project.

The TLC has final authority over this project including: TLC seats are not time-limited. There is no fixed size of the TLC. The TLC should be of such a size as to ensure adequate coverage of important areas of expertise balanced with the ability to make decisions efficiently.

The TLC may add additional members to the TLC by a standard TLC motion.

A TLC member may be removed from the TLC by voluntary resignation, or by a standard TLC or PLC motion.

No more than 1/3 of the TLC members may be affiliated with the same employer. If removal or resignation of a TLC member, or a change of employment by a TLC member, creates a situation where more than 1/3 of the TLC membership shares an employer, then the situation must be immediately remedied by the resignation or removal of one or more TLC members affiliated with the over-represented employer(s).

TLC members have additional responsibilities over and above those of a Committer. These responsibilities ensure the project has a technical viability and sustainability in a smooth way. TLC members are expected to review code contributions, approve changes to this document, and manage the copyrights within the project outputs.

TLC members fulfill all requirements of Committers, and also:
  • May merge pull requests for accepted issues upon reviewing and approving the changes without the need to ping other committers who might have greater ownership over the affected code area, given that reviewing and accepting the pull request does not require deep knowledge in the affected code area.
  • Push code directly to the repos or, when necessary, create and merge their own pull requests once they have collected the feedback they deem necessary.
  • Discuss once a month the technical status and project roadmap.
To become a TLC member:
  • Work in a helpful and collaborative way with the community.
  • Have given good feedback on others' submissions and displayed an overall understanding of the code quality standards for the project.
  • Commit to being a part of the community for the long-term.
  • Have submitted a minimum of 20 substantive pull requests or pushed a minimum of 20 substantive commits across the different projects (IDE, Docker-Selenium, Selenium, Site & Docs).
A Committer is invited to become a TLC member by existing TLC members. A nomination will result in discussion and then a decision by the TLC.

Process for Adding TLC Members

  1. Add the GitHub user to the Selenium TLC team
  2. Set the GitHub user to have the "Owner" role for the SeleniumHQ organization
  3. Invite to the Slack TLC chat room (selenium-tlc)
  4. Add the TLC member to the different package distribution organizations
    • NPM
    • SonarType (maven)
    • pypi.org
    • rubygems.org
    • nuget.org
  5. Tweet congratulations to the new TLC member from the SeleniumHQ Twitter account
To see the list of current TLC members please click here.

Project Leadership Committee (PLC)

The overall continuity and future of the project is overseen by the Project Leadership Committee (PLC), which acts as a bridge between the Selenium project and the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC).

Since there are many different facets to the Selenium project, the PLC wants to reflect more than just people who sling code about. The PLC gets involved in different ways, such as whenever the project spends money, enters legal agreements, or has to deal with lawyers. Typically the PLC will discuss the topic with the rest of the community, and then a voting session will take place.

PLC seats are not time-limited. Only one person on the PLC may be affiliated with any given employer at a time. The PLC member count should be always odd so that no votes are ever tied, an ideal minimum number is 5. PLC members should also be active members of the community.

To become a PLC member:
  • An existing PLC member steps down and suggests someone (or some people) to replace them.
  • Be a committer or a contributor.
  • Commit to being a part of the community for the long-term.
  • The existing PLC consults with the TLC and the active Committers, who will seek a decision based on a Consensus Seeking Process to add or not those people.
  • No-one is ever suggested publicly without first discussing the idea with them first (to make sure that they are okay with it).
The PLC has final authority over this project including:
  • Project governance and process (including this policy).
  • Contribution policy (shared with the TLC).
  • Budget and legal related issues.
The PLC also should discuss once a month the overall status of the project and any pending or upcoming topics.

A PLC member may be removed from the PLC by voluntary resignation, or by a standard PLC motion.

Process for Adding PLC Members

  1. Invite to the Slack PLC chat room (selenium-plc)
  2. Tweet congratulations to the new PLC member from the SeleniumHQ Twitter account
To see the list of current PLC members please click here.

Communication Channels

The project maintains various channels for providing information, supporting development and enabling communication between team members. Adherence to the project's Code of Conduct is strictly mandatory for all types of communication in these channels.

  • Twitter Account @seleniumhq: for communicating and promoting news around the project or project related topics.
  • Chat Room: chat for all Selenium users to seek help and support on problems using the project.
  • Slack : mirrors the IRC Chat room and is also used by all Selenium users to seek help and support on problems using the project.
  • Project Committers Channel, selenium-committers in the Slack channel mentioned above: private channel for members of the Project Committers team to discuss contributions and organise other collaborative efforts.
  • TLC Channel, selenium-tlc in the Slack channel mentioned above: private channel for TLC members to discuss technical planning and technical project roadmap.
  • PLC Channel, selenium-plc in the Slack channel mentioned above: private channel for PLC members to overall project planning, roadmap and related issues.

Consensus Seeking Process

The PLC and TLC follow a Consensus Seeking decision making model.

When an agenda item has appeared to reach a consensus, the moderator will ask "Does anyone object?" as a final call for dissent from the consensus.

If an agenda item cannot reach a consensus, a PLC/TLC member can call for either a closing vote or a vote to postpone further discussion on the issue until the next meeting. The call for a vote must be approved by a majority of the TSC or else the discussion will continue. Simple majority wins.

Sponsorship

The Selenium project is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Conservancy has allowed us to pool organizational resources with other projects, such as Inkscape, Samba, and Wine, in order to reduce the management overhead associated with creating our own, dedicated legal entity.

Please see more details at https://selenium.dev/sponsor/

Commercial and Community Driven Projects

The wide use of the tools provided by the Selenium project has created a large offer of commercial services and open source/community driven projects. The Selenium project enables and encourages anyone to start any type of project or service that has as its objective to simplify and spread the use of Selenium across the community.

Nevertheless, due to its open source, community and non-profit origin, the Selenium project will only mention on its website projects of the same nature based on Selenium or WebDriver, except on the sponsors page. If a commercial tool or project wants to be mentioned in the Selenium website, please see the Sponsorship section of this document.

Raising Issues Related to Governance

This governance model necessarily leaves many situations unspecified. If questions arise as to how a given situation should proceed according to the overall goals of the project, the best thing to do is to open a GitHub issue and ping the PLC/TLC members.




This work is a derivative of the ESLint Project Governance Model

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

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