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Governance

Core Principles

  • Members are chosen and promoted to various committees based on their actual contributions.
  • Members work towards the overall health and adoption of a more open ecosystem and agnostic to interests of the companies they represent.

Contributors

  • Open - Anyone can contribute but needs to sign a contributor license. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
  • All code changes need to be approved by at least 1 maintainer elected by Tech Council (TC) and all TC members are cc’ed.

Maintainers

  • Responsible for reviewing and approving code changes to ensure they align with the project's technical standards and governance principles.
  • Build tools and documentation to facilitate adoption of the protocol.
  • Tech Council (TC) can add, remove & nominate maintainers as needed.
  • All code changes require approval from at least one Maintainer.

Domain Working Groups (DWG)

  • Because the TC cannot be experts in every field, Domain Working Groups (DWG) may be formed as a natural part of expanding the protocol.
  • DWG are subject to TC oversight - all DWG artifacts must be reviewed and approved by the TC.
  • Acts as the consensus venue for industry participants (e.g., multiple airlines) to agree on shared interoperability standards within the protocol, maintain the specific documentation and implementation guides for their domain's capabilities.
  • A group of 3+ organizations can submit a charter to the Governing Council to form a DWG (e.g., "Travel WG"). Once chartered, the DWG has autonomy to define capabilities for their domain and submit for TC approvals.

Tech Council (TC)

  • Responsible for maintaining core technical changes to the spec, e.g., adding new features, reviewing enhancement proposals etc.
  • Elected by the Governing Council (GC).
  • Includes 8 core members, 4 from each founding organization (Google & Shopify), each with 1 vote (total 8 votes).
  • Includes 4 members from any org, each with 1 vote (total 4 votes), elected by the founding members of the TC every 6 months, based on their technical contributions towards the protocol. Members can be re-elected any number of times. See TC_ELECTIONS.md for more details.
  • Decisions are made with a majority vote.
  • Any TC member may request a review from the Governing Council at any time for any additional inputs.

Governing Council (GC)

  • Responsible for governance, overall health and adoption of the protocol.
  • GC serves as the ultimate owner of all UCP assets. Google acts as the custodian of the UCP.dev domain, holding and managing it solely for the benefit of the Council and the partnership’s collective interests.
  • Includes a total of 2 core members, with each founding organization (Google & Shopify) having 1 core member, each with 1 vote (total 2 votes).
  • Includes 1 member elected annually by the GC for contributions to the protocol's health and adoption from any organization. For the first year, this seat is open, and Google holds the proxy vote for this seat, to facilitate rapid early stage growth & adoption of the protocol.
  • Can add/remove TC members via simple majority vote.
  • May choose to review and veto TC decision or recommendation.
  • Decisions are made with a majority vote.

Communication

To ensure the protocol remains open and agnostic, all governance activities must be visible, accessible, and searchable. All communication that is intended to be public (concerning, e.g., adding a capability before creating an extension, debating one approach versus another, or announcements relating to upcoming launches, etc.) shall take place on a shared Google group with a mailing list. This includes discussion on enhancement proposals, announcements about official specification changes and final governance votes.

  • TC & DWG Meetings: Agendas should be posted 24 hours in advance. Minutes and meeting notes should be published to the repository within 1 week of the meeting conclusion. TC reserves the right to redact or edit meeting notes as needed.
  • Governing Council Meetings: Summaries of strategic decisions and budget allocations will be published quarterly (specific sensitive partnership discussions may remain private).