Overview

How is the Baseline Protocol governed ?

License and Patent Policies

All repos in the Ethereum OASIS organization, including Baseline Protocol repositories, adhere to OASIS Open Projects license and patent polices.

In order to ensure clean IPR that allows Baseline to remain an open technology, OASIS rules require an Entity CLA for persons or organizations contributing on behalf of a legal entity, and an Individual CLA for community contributions. You must sign the ICLA before your pull requests to the baseline repository will be merged. Check here to see if your company has signed the ECLA.

Code of Conduct

​Here is the link to the official code of conduct.

Charter: Baseline Open Source Project Governance

Ratified on March 18, 2020 by the PGB.

The Baseline Protocol shall be a project within the Ethereum-Oasis project of OASIS through at least May 31, 2020. The Project Governing Board (PGB) of the Ethereum-OASIS project, which was established in 2019 and is currently supported by the EEA and the Ethereum Foundation (EF), currently consists of Dan Burnett (ConsenSys), Tas Dienes (EF), and Chaals Neville (EEA) – supported by Jory Burson (OASIS). The Baseline Project shall be supported under the existing contract with OASIS and shall require no additional fees than those already paid by EEA/EF and the parties to the Open Ethereum Project until May 31, 2020. Negotiation to continue the Baseline Project with OASIS shall be conducted between March and May 2020.

License

Contributions to the open source repo shall be under creative commons public domain license (CC0 1.0 Universal).

TSC

The Baseline Protocol shall be governed by a Technical Steering Committee, with 7, 9 or 11 Members, one of whom will serve as TSC Chair. The initial number of seats for the bootstrapping period (see below) shall be 11.

A quorum of two-thirds of the TSC members can conduct any vote required of the TSC during any given meeting. Disputes on whether a matter should be tabled for a different TSC meeting can be presented to the PGB of the Ethereum-OASIS project for a decision. A move to table a matter can be lodged during a TSC meeting, and it shall be tabled and submitted to the PGB with a simple majority vote. If a majority cannot be achieved during the meeting, a minimum of two members that were present at the meeting in question may dispute the matter after the fact to the PGB.

No legal entity (or set of entities controlled by a single party) shall hold more than three seats out of eleven (or two seats out of seven or nine) on the TSC during any given period.

A TSC member is eligible to lose their seat upon missing two consecutive TSC meetings or three total during a period between elections. Removal is completed by a simple majority vote of the remaining TSC members that are not being considered for removal. The PGB of the Ethereum-OASIS project has the option to consider extenuating circumstances and determine whether or not to remove a member, if the TSC itself cannot come to a determination. After removal, a special election of the vacant seat shall be held among contributors. The seat will be up for re-election at the next regular election cycle.

Bootstrapping Period:

In all cases (7, 9 or 11 member TSC), the original three organizations (EY, MSFT, ConsenSys) hold less than 50% of the seats, during the initial six month bootstrapping period.

One TSC Member shall serve as provisional chair of the TSC for six months. On September 30, 2020, all members and the chair shall be open for new elections. Members of the community shall have voting rights based on contribution (see below):

Steady State Periods:

After the six month Bootstrap Period, there shall be a nomination and election period for electing TSC members, typically from the ranks of Contributors and Maintainers. The TSC voting members shall consist of eleven (7, 9 or 11) elected members chosen by Active Contributors. An Active Contributor is defined as any Contributor who has had a contribution accepted into the Master Branch of the codebase during the prior six (6) months. The TSC shall approve the process and timing for nominations and elections held on an annual basis.

Maintainers:

Contributors who have the ability to commit code and contributions to a repo's main branch on the Baseline Protocol. A Contributor may become a Maintainer by a majority approval of the existing Maintainers. The initial number of maintainers required to merge a pull request to master in the github repo shall be three, but may be amended to no fewer than two by a simple majority of the maintainers.

Contributors:

Anyone in the technical community that contributes code, documentation or other technical artifacts to the Baseline codebase or Standards Specification.

Contributions:

The TSC shall determine the number of maintainers required to merge a contribution into the master branch of the repo. This shall be done during the first TSC meeting. Changes to this number require a simple majority of TSC members.

Ratification

This document shall be ratified by the PGB before the public launch of the Baseline Protocol. Changes to this document shall require a simple majority of the PGB.

Details on OASIS and the Open Ethereum Project

Governance documents from the existing Open Ethereum Project.

TSC Rules for Mid-term Member Replacements

In the event that a TSC Member resigns more than 30 days before the end of their elected term, they may nominate a replacement. The resigning member shall consider the replacement’s active participation in, contribution to, and commitment toward the Baseline Protocol community when selecting such candidate.

The position shall remain open for 30 days or until 7 days after the next steering committee meeting, whichever comes first (the open period). During that period, any other TSC member or Active Contributor to the /baseline github repo, may nominate another person.

If there is only one candidate, the TSC Chair must issue a “call for objections” to the remaining TSC members. If there is unanimous approval (no objections), then the candidate is elected. If there are one or more objections recorded, the position must be put up for a vote of the Active Contributors according to the rules of normal TSC voting as written in this document.

If more than one candidate is nominated during the open period, the position must be run through the same voting process used during normal periodic TSC elections.

The “call for objections” or the vote must be conducted during a live TSC meeting that has a quorum present or must be conducted over a seven day asynchronous voting period via any messaging or voting system approved for use by OASIS. In a “call for objections,” non-responses shall be considered assent. In a vote, non-responses must be ignored. In the event that the number of TSC Members resigning in the same open period reduces the total number of TSC members to below a quorum from the previous number, then a new full TSC must be elected following the standard procedure for periodic elections.