The Marlowe Special Interest Group charter establishes the scope, intellectual property terms used to develop the materials identified and the details related to requirements and operational processes relevant to the SIG’s operation.
Name: Marlowe Special Interest Group
Meeting details: Initially in IOG Technical Community Discord, fortnightly 13:00 UTC Tuesdays, starting 21 May 2024; this will migrate to the MBO in due course.
Aim: To act as a focus for developers, users and other stakeholders in the Marlowe language and its ecosystem.
To act as a focus for developers, users and other stakeholders in the Marlowe language and its ecosystem. To foster interest in Marlowe, to sustain the Marlowe community, and to set directions for the future development of Marlowe through developing proposals for enhancement and evolution of the language and its ecosystem. The group can also create roadmaps for tools and technologies, foster collaboration between tool builders and providers, and promote interaction with similar bodies for complementary languages and tools.
Group members are expected to behave in a responsible and respectful manner in discussions, being aware that there can be divergent views in a community like this. Group members that do not adhere to this will be subject to action, including removal of their voting rights.
The group has been formed of organisations and individuals working around Marlowe contracts and tools.
Chairs shall be volunteers and elected by the members according to the process described below, with two chairs (a chair and a co-chair) serving at one time.
Chairs will be re-selected by the working group on an annual basis at the first meeting in November each year, or on an ad hoc basis if a vacancy arises. Chairs have no maximum term.
Chairs are responsible for:
- driving inclusivity by ensuring that individuals and organisations within the ecosystem are aware of and may have access to being members of the group,
- identifying consensus within the group,
- recording decisions,
- ensuring compliance with the rules and principles established in this document, and
- being a liaison between the group and all groups with which the group is coordinating.
Any Marlowe stakeholder or enthusiast is free to join this working group, whether working for an organisation in the ecosystem or not.
This distinction is, however, made between the two. Among participants in the group, we use the following vocabulary:
- Organisational members are organisations represented in the working group
- Representatives are employees of member organisations
- Individual members are Marlowe enthusiasts that are not employees or members
In order to join the working group, a new individual member must participate in one meeting and state their interest in joining the group. In order to join the working group, a new organisational member must participate in one meeting and state their interest in joining the group. Members may not vote in the first meeting that they attend.
This group is a community-led initiative, and we encourage organisational and individual members of the Marlowe community to attend or bring representatives to its communicating medium (currently Discord). The membership list is visible in Discord, and attendance at meetings is recorded in meeting minutes.
Members of the working group are committed to a high standard of public behaviour and strive to treat every person with decency. As such, representatives should be respectful to one another, and the group chairs have the right to exclude anyone not obeying this rule.
The Marlowe Special Interest Group endeavours to make all decisions by consensus. Where the working group cannot reach consensus with respect to a particular decision, decisions will be taken as follows.
- Members of the working group are partitioned into three disjoint sets: chairs, representatives of organisations, and individual members.
- Votes will be taken separately among the organisations, with one vote per organisation, and individual members, with one vote per member.
- The quorum for each group will be three.
- To be passed, a measure will need to be approved by a simple majority of those voting in both groups (if both are quorate), or in the quorate group (if only one is quorate). A result of equal votes “YES” and “NO” in one group decision is to be interpreted as “NO”.
- In the case of a tie between the decisions of the two groups, the joint chairs’ votes can resolve the matter; this requires both chairs to vote in the same way.
Note that the number of representatives for each organisational member shall not impact the outcome of votes in the “organisations” group.
All the deliverables of the working group are to be gathered in a GitHub repository for the Special Interest Group hereafter referred to as “the repository”.
Any working group member may submit a proposed idea as a candidate. This will be raised as an issue in the repository. The working group will agree if they want to work on this.
If the working group decides to work on one of the ideas, a member will create a branch that points to the corresponding issue and uploads one or more documents (as text markdown files). Then the working group members work on the documents until a first draft is complete.
Once the documents are ready for review, a pull request in the repository is created, assigning at least two reviewers.
The working group members will review the documents and make any comments or suggestions. An iterative process starts with the interaction between reviewers and the draft’s editors.
Once the reviewers are happy with the documents, a PR vote shall be announced one week in advance in the Discord channel to be merged into the main branch.
Maintainers are expected to handle the repository management as described in the workflow.
Maintainers must be Special Interest Group members selected by Special Interest Group members according to the decision making process described above. At least 3 maintainers need to be active at any given time operating the Repository Process for the Special Interest Group. Maintainers should have different organisational affiliations to represent the diversity of the Special Interest Group.
This initiative is funded by the members of the Special Interest Group, by providing the necessary resources, time and expertise. We encourage members of the Special Interest groups to find different sources of funding.
The Special Interest Group will specify in the root directory of its repository the copyright mode of the Special Interest group github repository under which it will operate prior to initiating any work on any Draft Deliverable or Approved Deliverable other than source code. This information should be specified in the root directory of the repository.
The Marlowe Special Interest Group can request feedback from and/or allow Non-Special Interest Group Participant participation in the Marlowe Special Interest Group subject to each Non-Special Interest Group Participant agreeing to the below Feedback Agreement.
The remit of the Marlowe Special Interest Group is to act as a focus for developers, users and other stakeholders in the Marlowe language and its ecosystem. To foster interest in Marlowe, to sustain the Marlowe community, and to set directions for the future development of Marlowe through developing proposals for enhancement and evolution of the language and its ecosystem. The group can also create roadmaps for tools and technologies, foster collaboration between tool builders and providers, and promote interaction with similar bodies for complementary languages and tools.
The Marlowe Special Interest Group would like to receive input, suggestions and other feedback (“Feedback”) on the Materials. By participating on this Special Interest group, you (on behalf of yourself if you are an individual and your organisation if you are providing Feedback on behalf of the organisation) grant the Marlowe Special Interest Group all applicable intellectual property rights owned or controlled by you or your organisation a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use, disclose, copy, publish, licence, modify, sublicense or otherwise distribute and exploit Feedback you provide for the purpose of developing and promoting the Materials and in connection with any product that implements and complies with the Materials. You warrant to the best of your knowledge that you have rights to provide this Feedback, and if you are providing Feedback on behalf of an organisation, you warrant that you have the rights to provide Feedback on behalf of your organisation. You also acknowledge that the Marlowe Special Interest Group is not required to incorporate your Feedback into any version of the Materials. You further agree that you and your organisation will not disclose it or distribute drafts of the non-public Marlowe Special Interest Group Materials to third parties. Unless the parties agree otherwise or the Marlowe Special Interest Group materials are made publicly available by the Marlowe Special Interest Group, this obligation of non-disclosure will expire five (5) years from the date the material was disclosed to you.