Document the governance model and the path to maintainership (#8329)

Co-authored-by: Marc Mueller <30130371+cdce8p@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jacob Walls <jacobtylerwalls@gmail.com>

2 files changed, 111 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/governance.rst b/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/governance.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..cd6266520
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/governance.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+============
+ Governance
+============
+
+How to become part of the project ?
+-----------------------------------
+
+How to become a contributor ?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+- Follow the code of conduct
+- Search by yourself before asking for help
+- Open an issue
+- Investigate an issue and report your finding
+- Open a merge request directly if you feel it's a consensual change
+
+Reporting a bug is being a contributor already.
+
+How to become a triager ?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+- Contribute for more than 3 releases consistently.
+- Do not be too opinionated, follow the code of conduct without requiring emotional
+  works from the maintainers. It does not mean that disagreements are impossible,
+  only that arguments should stay technical and reasonable so the conversation
+  is civil and productive.
+- Have a maintainer suggest that you become triager, without you asking
+- Get unanimous approval or neutral agreement from current maintainers.
+
+How to become a maintainer ?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+- Contribute two big code merge requests over multiple releases (for example
+  one checker in 2.13 and the following bug after release and one complicated
+  bug fixes in 2.14). Otherwise contributing for more than 3 releases consistently
+  with great technical and interpersonal skills.
+- Take ownership of a part of the code that is not maintained well at the moment
+  or that you contributed personally (if we feel we can't merge something without
+  your review, you're going to be able to merge those yourself soon).
+- Triage for multiple months (close duplicate, clean up issues, answer questions...)
+- Have an admin suggest that you become maintainer, without you asking
+- Get unanimous approval or neutral agreement from current maintainers.
+
+
+How to become an admin ?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+- Contribute for several hundreds of commits over a long period of time
+  with excellent interpersonal skills and code quality.
+- Maintain pylint for multiple years (code review, triaging and maintenance tasks).
+- At this point probably have another admin leave the project or
+  become inactive for years.
+- Have an admin suggest that you become an admin, without you asking.
+- Get unanimous approval or neutral agreement from current admins.
+
+
+How are decisions made ?
+------------------------
+
+Everyone is expected to follow the code of conduct. pylint is a do-ocracy / democracy.
+You're not allowed to behave poorly because you contributed a lot. But if
+you're not going to do the future maintenance work, your valid opinions might not be
+taken into account by those that will be affected by it.
+
+What are the fundamental tenets of pylint development?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+General:
+
+- We favor correctness over performance, because pylint is not used primarily
+  for its performance. Performance is still important and needs to be taken into
+  account from the get go.
+
+- We then favor false negatives over false positives if correctness is
+  impossible to achieve.
+
+- We try to keep the configuration sane, but if there's a hard decision to take we
+  add an option so that pylint is multiple sizes fit all (after configuration)
+
+Where to add a new checker or message:
+
+- Error messages (things that will result in an error if run) should be builtin
+  checks, activated by default
+
+- Messages that are opinionated, even slightly, should be opt-in (added as :ref:`an extension<plugins>`)
+
+- We don't shy away from opinionated checks (like the while checker), but there's such a
+  thing as too opinionated, if something is too opinionated it should be an external
+  :ref:`pylint plugin<plugins>`.
+
+How are disagreements handled ?
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+When something is not consensual users, maintainers, and admins discuss until an
+agreement is reached.
+
+Depending on the difficulty of the discussion and the importance of a fast resolution,
+a decision can be taken:
+
+- Unanimously between discussion participants, contributors and maintainers (preferably)
+
+- By asking discussion participants for their opinions with an emoji survey in the
+  issue and then using the majority if no maintainers feel strongly about the issue.
+
+- By majority of admins if no admins feel strongly about the issue.
+
+- By asking all users for their opinions in a new issue that will be pinned for
+  multiple months before taking the decision if two admins feel strongly on an
+  opposite side of the issue. Once the result is obvious the majority decision
+  is not up for discussion anymore.
diff --git a/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/index.rst b/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/index.rst
index 1b945263d..3576c68ff 100644
--- a/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/index.rst
+++ b/doc/development_guide/contributor_guide/index.rst
@@ -13,3 +13,4 @@ The contributor guide will help you if you want to contribute to pylint itself.
    tests/index
    profiling
    release
+   governance