Re: Documenting the governance of the git project?

Hi Junio,

Thanks for your reply.

On 22/09/2026 00:09, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Specifically, we do not have an official list of reviewers with an
approval bit or those with privileges and responsibilities to speak
of.  Clout in the community, on both technical and non-technical
matters, is earned through continued contribution over time, and one
interesting side effect of this is that a totally new person cannot
even know whose words carry weight before they are accustomed to the
community.

Yes, I wouldn't try to codify the clout of project members in such a document. But even without that, I don't think we'd run out of things to describe. Just by reading the discussion from the Contributor Summit, I identified a few more roles I hadn't thought about: the set of people with access to the git-security list and the maintainer(s) of git-scm.com. I imagine there might be other well delimited hats like those, whose expectations and renewal process we could describe.

quoted

If there is interest, I would be happy to try and document this. All I
need is the confirmation that people see value in maintaining such a
piece of documentation, and the readiness of project leadership to
answer my questions (which I would try to do in a way that respects
their time, using the communication channel they prefer). I would then
submit my write-up as a patch in the location/format you prefer. I would
of course be delighted to team up with others in this endeavor.

I am somewhat indifferent.  I wouldn't oppose it at all. I would
welcome a descriptive "this is roughly how it currently works"
document, but it might be hard to come up with a good descriptive
document.

Once the document starts trying to be prescriptive, it may open a
big discussion with different "opinions" not backed by any common
experience from which discussion participants can draw, which would
lead to a lot of wasted time and effort.  That is the only thing I
would be a bit worried about.

I think aiming for a descriptive document makes perfect sense (even having it state explicitly that it isn't prescriptive). Even without trying to give it any authority, the questions asked in the process of writing the document can be valuable on their own. They can prompt the team to identify some gaps or some things that they want to change. That change can happen at its own pace, independently of the documentation effort.

For instance, if the team behind git-security is struggling with a high volume of reports, I wouldn't be surprised if by taking the time to describe who's on the team and how to get in and out of it, we might identify people who'd be fit and willing to serve (for clarity, I am definitely not throwing my hat here - the task sounds absolutely daunting). This is a random example: I'm not (yet) familiar with your existing processes in this area, so it can be that I'm off-base on this one, but I'm sure you get the broad idea.

Best,

Antonin