DRAFT DOCUMENT, currently under review
GC.OS is a mission-driven non-profit organisation with the public benefit aim to support and promote open source, and open governance in open source.
This document describes how that participation takes place, which roles there are in the organisation, how we make decisions, and how we acknowledge contributions.
This document is not a formal set of bylaws, but an operational best practice guide.
- Put AI ownership into public hands - champion open source AI that is "AI owned by you", democratically governed and designed to benefit society.
- Enable democratic, transparent governance - develop and promote governance patterns, open standards and community processes that keep decision-making about AI transparent and accountable.
- Steward and sustain the open source AI ecosystem - fiscally host and support core projects and maintainers so critical infrastructure stays healthy, resilient, and self-sufficient. Act as a non-profit umbrella to simplify funding, tax-deductible donations and contractual relationships for independent open source AI projects.
- Provide free, production-ready building blocks - publish standardized software, templates and best-practice artefacts that let organisations adopt AI responsibly without heavy upfront investment
- Support skills, mentoring and capacity building - run training, mentoring, upskilling and community events so developers, maintainers and public organisations can build, operate and audit AI systems.
- Bridge public interest, industry and government - work with administrations, companies and research institutions to demonstrate practical, societally beneficial deployments of open source AI.
- Cultivate a federated international ecosystem of open source - collaborate across borders and communities to make open source AI a global public good, while respecting local legal and societal needs.
The high-level principles of our governance model are:
- open governance. GC.OS is openly governed by the community of open source projects under its umbrella. Anyone can join, contribute, and participate.
- democratic participation. GC.OS is dedicated to building democratic alternatives to autocratic governance models of AI. We consider creators, contributors and users of AI as our sovereign electorate.
- autonomy of projects. GC.OS is an umbrella organisation for open source projects and their communities. We respect the autonomy of projects, and any decision making competence with regards to projects is reversibly vested from projects in GC.OS.
- agility. The field of AI is fast moving, and so must we be in order to make a positive impact. Autonomy and transparency is preferred above long deliberation without action.
- defensible checks and balances. We must carefully guard our principles from external threats and those wishing to accumulate power for personal gain. A democracy that cannot defend itself is not a democracy at all.
Everyone who participates in activities of GC.OS is expected to show respect and courtesy to other community members at all times, and act in the best interest of the mission.
Members of the community should refer to the full [GC.OS Code of Conduct](coc link)
We distinguish between the following key roles that community members may exercise. For each role, we describe their rights and responsibilities, and appointment process in more detail below.
| Role | Function | Appointment |
|---|---|---|
| Contributor | Elects board | Automatic via defined contribution threshold |
| Core developer | Technical decision making | Automatic via same role in projects |
| Board member - elected director | Executive decision making | Elected in yearly board election by contributors |
| Board member - project director | Executive decision making | Automatic via same role in projects |
| Board observer | Full view of board business | Appointed by board |
| Committee member | Committee specific, by delegation from board | Appointed by board |
Contributors are community members who have contributed in concrete ways to the project. Anyone can become a contributor, and contributions can take many forms – not only code.
Anyone is eligible to be a contributor.
Categorization as a contributor is automatic as soon as a defined threshold of contributions to projects supported by GC.OS is met, as per the contributions document, which include a confirmation step by the individual categorized as contributor.
The set of contributors is the primary electorate for the regular board elections.
Core developers are contributors who have shown that they are dedicated to the continued development a project supported by GC.OS through ongoing engagement with the community.
Appointment and eligibility of core developers is managed on the level of GC.OS supported projects. GC.OS supported projects will maintain an up-to-date list of core developers and notify GC.OS of appointments and ends of tenure.
Core developers direct technical operations of their respective projects
They also direct technical operations of GC.OS as a whole, by the consensus principle. In case of disputes, the board has the right to resolve decisions.
An individual's GC.OS core developer appointment ceases as soon as the individual is no longer core developer of any GC.OS supported project.
The board of directors is the primary executive and decision making body of GC.OS.
It has two types of members:
- elected director
- director representative of a supported project
An individuals can hold one of these roles or both, or multiple, for multiple supported projects.
Decision power a-priori extends only to GC.OS proper. Further competences can be reversibly delegated by supported projects to GC.OS, by decision of individual projects.
The board decides and executes on
- top level decision making
- technical direction, strategic planning, roadmap
- conflict resolution in decision making
- budget planning and financials
- contracting and collaboration with external organisations
- community operations
- internal policies
- public messaging
Elected directors are elected in a yearly election following the GC.OS elections provsions, with exactly seven seats available at any point in time.
The repository linked contains exact elibility criteria, information about the election process, including the election schedule, the election rules, and past election results.
Each GC.OS supported project also assigns one or multiple people to serve on the board of GC.OS as project representative directors.
The board of directors has regular public meetings that the full community is welcome to attend. Meetings take place on the social channels of GC.OS, currently on Discord.
For more details about our meetings and minutes of previous meetings, please go to our governance repository
To contact the CC directly, please send an email to info@gcos.ai.
Board observers have a full view of board proceedings, without decision making capacities of fullboard members.
Board observers have a full view of reserved baord proceedings, the private board channels and board-wide accounts. Board observers can participate in discussions on private channels to ensure that more members of the community have direct input on board decisions.
Board observers' responsibilities include to critically scrutinize board decision making and give their input on what is of community's interest or benefit.
Board observers do not possess the voting or decision making rights of full Board members.
Eligibility for board observers is a contribution threshold equivalent to the threshold required by elected board directors, see thecontributions document.
Appointment is by nomination by a core developer and a vote by board members. A nomination will result in a vote by the boardmembers which will stay open for 5 days excluding weekends.
Board observer membership votes are subject to a double majority approval of the board, as outlined in the "decision making" section.
In case of ties, the board member with shortest tenure breaks the tie.
The purpose of this section is to formalize the decision-making process used by the GC.OS board. We clarify:
- what types of changes we make decision on,
- how decisions are made, and
- who participates in the decision making.
The GC.OS decision-making process is designed to take into account feedback from all community members and strives to find consensus, while avoiding deadlocks when no consensus can be found.
GC.OS board votes take place on the private board channel.
The board of directors is expected to make decisions on GC.OS executive matters, and on matters in scopes delegated from supported projects.
Technical management of the supported packages, including decision making on pull requests or designs, is expected to be typically handled on the level of individual packages.
First, consensus seeking should be applied to find a decision.
In the absence of consensus, the general principle of decision making is that of a double majority, by direct vote or by delegated authority.
This means that a motion passes if and only if both the following are true:
- an absolute majority of elected board directors vote for it
- an absolute majority of projects vote for it. Votes of individual project representative directors count as a equal weight fraction of a single project vote, e.g., if a project appoints two representatives, each have 0.5 votes.
Absolute majorities are counted among votes cast in the respective category of board members.
The same double majority principle applies to support for actions or decisions by delegation.
- Start and end time of the vote must be announced in the board channel on discord.
- The vote will conclude 5 working days excluding weekends from the start for the vote.
- Votes are voluntary. Abstentions are allowed. Board members can abstain by simply not casting a vote.
- All votes are a binary vote: for or against accepting a proposal.
To oversee any votes and elections, after each round of elections an elections and voting committee should be appointed, to ensure that votes and elections are conducted fairly, transparently, and in accordance with the bylaws. The elections committee is typically responsible for preparing election materials, verifying member eligibility, overseeing nominations, managing the distribution and collection of ballots, and ensuring that voting procedures are unbiased and clearly communicated. They may also tally votes, certify results, and address any concerns or disputes related to the election process, helping maintain trust and integrity within the organization’s governance.
The elections committee is appointed according to the general procedure for appointing committees.