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Overview
This project is led by a project lead and managed by the community. That is, the community actively contributes to the day-to-day maintenance of the project, but the general strategic line is drawn by the project lead. In case of disagreement, they have the last word. It is the project lead’s job to resolve disputes within the community and to ensure that the project is able to progress in a coordinated way. In turn, it is the community’s job to guide the decisions of the project lead through active engagement and contribution.
Roles and Responsibilities
Project Lead
Evan You (@yyx990803), the founder of the project, serves as the project lead of Vue.js.
The project lead has the final say in all aspects of decision making within the project. However, because the community always has the ability to fork, this person is fully answerable to the community. It is the project lead’s responsibility to set the strategic objectives of the project and communicate these clearly to the community. They also have to understand the community as a whole and strive to satisfy as many conflicting needs as possible, while ensuring that the project survives in the long term.
In many ways, the role of the project lead is about diplomacy. The key is to ensure that, as the project expands, the right people are given influence over it and the community rallies behind the vision of the project lead. The lead’s job is then to ensure that the core team members (see below) make the right decisions on behalf of the project. Generally speaking, as long as the core team members are aligned with the project’s strategy, the project lead will allow them to proceed as they desire.
The Core Team
Members of the core team are contributors who have made multiple valuable contributions to the project and are now relied upon to both write code directly to the repository and screen the contributions of others. In many cases they are programmers but it is also possible that they contribute in a different role, for example community engagement. Typically, a core team member will focus on a specific aspect of the project, and will bring a level of expertise and understanding that earns them the respect of the community and the project lead. The role of core team member is not an official one, it is simply a position that influential members of the community will find themselves in as the project lead looks to them for guidance and support.
Core team members have no authority over the overall direction of the project. However, they do have the ear of the project lead. It is a core team member’s job to ensure that the lead is aware of the community’s needs and collective objectives, and to help develop or elicit appropriate contributions to the project. Often, core team members are given informal control over their specific areas of responsibility, and are assigned rights to directly modify certain areas of the source code. That is, although core team members do not have explicit decision-making authority, they will often find that their actions are synonymous with the decisions made by the lead.
Active Core Team Members
Active Core Team Members contribute to the project on a regular basis. An active core team member usually have one or more focus area - in the most common cases, they will be responsible for the regular issue triaging, bug fixing, documentation improvements or feature development in a sub project repository.
Core Team Emeriti
Some core team members who have made valuable contributions in the past may no longer be able to commit to the same level of participation today due to various reasons. That is perfectly normal, and any past contributions to the project are still highly appreciated. These core team members are honored for their contributions as Core Team Emeriti, and are welcome to resume active participation at any time.
Community Partners
Some contributors, although not providing regular technical contributions like core team members, enriches the wider project ecosystem by doing some of the following:
- Organizing community conferences, meetups and other social activities
- Developing important higher level libraries and frameworks on top of Vue.js
- Translating documentation into different languages
- Authoring high-quality educational materials
- Curating community resources
Such contributors are recognized as Community Partners to honor their contributions.
Contributors
Contributors are community members who either have no desire to become core team members, or have not yet been given the opportunity by the project lead. They make valuable contributions, such as those outlined in the list below, but generally do not have the authority to make direct changes to the project code. Contributors engage with the project through communication tools, such as the RFC discussions, GitHub issues and pull requests, Discord chatroom, and the forum.
Anyone can become a contributor. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements and no selection process. To become a contributor, a community member simply has to perform one or more actions that are beneficial to the project.
Some contributors will already be engaging with the project as users, but will also find themselves doing one or more of the following:
- Supporting new users (current users often provide the most effective new user support)
- Reporting bugs
- Identifying requirements
- Supplying graphics and web design
- Programming
- Assisting with project infrastructure
- Writing documentation
- Fixing bugs
- Adding features
As contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, they may find that the project lead starts relying on them more and more. When this begins to happen, they gradually adopt the role of core team member, as described above.
Users
Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community: without them, the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no specific requirements.
Users should be encouraged to participate in the life of the project and the community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user activities include (but are not limited to):
- evangelizing about the project
- informing developers of project strengths and weaknesses from a new user’s perspective
- providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
- providing financial support through Patreon or Open Collective
Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often find themselves becoming more and more involved. Such users may then go on to become contributors, as described above.
Decision-Making Process
Major changes to the framework, especially breaking changes, are usually communicated ahead of time to the community via the RFC process. The RFC process provides an opportunity for the community to provide feedback in the design process, and allow the project lead and core team members to better gauge user needs.
It is, however, important to note that the RFC process does not hold any authority in terms of decision making. In case of disagreements, the project lead model does not need a formal conflict resolution process, since the project lead’s word is final. If the community chooses to question the wisdom of the actions of a core team member, the project lead can review their decisions by checking the relevant GitHub discussions, and either uphold or reverse them.
Contribution Process
Anyone can contribute to the project, regardless of their skills, as there are many ways to contribute. For instance, a contributor might be active in the project chatroom and issue tracker, or might supply pull requests. All forms of contribution must be performed in accordance to the project's Contributor Code of Conduct.
We are also working on a dedicated guide (WIP) which all new contributors should read and follow.
Support
All participants in the community are encouraged to provide support for new users within the project management infrastructure. This support is provided as a way of growing the community. Those seeking support should recognize that all support activity within the project is voluntary and is therefore provided as and when time allows. A user requiring guaranteed response times or results should therefore seek to purchase a support contract from a vendor. (Of course, that vendor should be an active member of the community.) However, for those willing to engage with the project on its own terms, and willing to help support other users, the community support channels are ideal.
This governance document is based upon the Benevolent Dictator Governance Model by Ross Gardler and Gabriel Hanganu, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This document itself is also licensed under the same license.