This page describes how this project is governed.

In setting this project up, we took inspiration from the Apache software foundation (http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html) and OSS Watch (http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/meritocraticGovernanceModel)

Meritocracy

The project is set up to be a meritocracy. We wanted it to be a collaborative effort from the start and our aim is to grow a global community of developers and end users who are actively involved in shaping the project as it moves along. We expect to invite community members who make significant ongoing contributions into decision-making roles over time.

The project is led by a steering group, which is equivalent to the project management committee in the Apache Software Foundation structure. The steering group is the project's strategic decision-making body and is explained in detail below. We are committed to making most decisions by reaching consensus in the community.

Project roles

The following roles exist on the project:

• Community Member
  Anyone who signs up to the community is a Community Member. This includes end users of the codebase or the authoring tool as well as people who are taking an active part in the discussions or simply watching discussions and developments on this community site.

• Contributor
  Contributors are people who are helping out and are actively involved in testing, creating documentation, working on code (bug fixes or feature implementations) or are helping with funding-related activities, marketing, submissions etc. Contributors may or may not work under the guidance of the core team and generally don’t have commit access to the core codebase.

• Collaborator
  Collaborators are members of the core team, i.e. they have direct access to and maybe even ownership of parts of the core codebase. They work on the project in line with the vision and are self-guided or led by the steering group. This may include work on maintaining or developing features in line with the strategy and roadmap of the project.

• Steering Group Member
  Members of the steering group are actively involved in the administrative side of running this open source project as well as being guardians of the vision and ambassadors of the project in general. Steering Group Members are involved in making strategic and sensitive decisions and guide the project along by fulfilling a number of specific roles. A breakdown of this is provided below.

• Steering Group Chair
  The Steering Group Chair is an active member of the steering group and responsible for the coordination and facilitation of the activities and events involved in governing and administering the project. The Steering Group Chair should at all times consider their role as being focused on setting the project up for, or guiding it towards success and actively seek opportunities for doing so. In the event of a tied vote (should we ever need to resort to voting on decisions), the Steering Group Chair also has the casting vote.

Steering Group

The Steering Group is currently reviewing the project structure and leadership roles in order to reflect Adapt’s rapid growth and ensure that the project remains optimally set up to achieve our vision and mission.

General decision-making framework

Finally, to help everyone keep us focused on the vision, we have created a framework of strategic interests (or perspectives, considerations), which anyone can apply to their own thinking and the decision-making process.

The following ‘ambitions’ can be applied to weigh up any idea or decision:

• To create the leading e-learning authoring tool
• To create an intuitive tool which is easy to use for non-technical end users
• To keep the project focused on learning
• To drive for low barrier to adoption
• To achieve mass adoption by a global developer community
• To achieve mass adoption by a global end user community
• To enable production of responsive content that works on multiple devices and can be deployed to a typical environment
• To create a freely available tool and output framework
• To create a tool which is fit for purpose in a commercial content production environment
• To work in collaboration with the industry
• To maintain a community-led governance structure

While this applies to everyone involved in this project at any level, we believe this is particularly important to the Steering Group Members.