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This document describes the norms and processes through which the Open Voice Network will pursue its objectives.
- Meetings will start on time and end on time. Meetings of Open Voice Network (OVON) standing committees and technical project committees will begin and conclude promptly at the times scheduled. If it is deemed important by the committee chair and/or meeting moderator to continue a conversation beyond the scheduled adjournment time, the chair or moderator will pause the meeting at the scheduled adjournment time, and invite participants to continue. No decision will be taken by a committee outside the scheduled meeting window.
- Meetings will operate under the Linux Foundation antitrust guidelines. The Linux Foundation antitrust guidelines are available at URL https://www.linuxfoundation.org/antitrust-policy/. A statement to this effect, along with a slide that shows the URL of the Linux Foundation antitrust guidelines, will be shown at the beginning of every OVON standing and technical project committee meeting.
- Meeting agendas will be published 48 hours in advance. Meeting agendas will be distributed to meeting participants no less than 48 hours in advance through the communication channel (generally Slack or e-mail) deemed most effective by the Committee, Work Group, or Community moderator. Meeting agendas for the OVON Technical Committee will be posted in the OVON GitHub Docs Repo no than 48 hours in advance of the meeting.
- Meetings will foster accountability and follow-up. The review of relevant and outstanding issues will be a stated agenda item early on the agenda of every Open Voice Network Technical Committee, Work Group, and Community meeting. The Technical Committee and Technical Committee Work Groups will use GitHub (see below) or an approved tool such as Trello to document issues for resolution. Outstanding issues will be reviewed in every meeting.
- Meetings will be recorded, and notes will be taken. All scheduled meetings of the Technical Committee, Technical Committee Work Groups, and Open Voice Network Communities will be recorded, using the recording technology of the web conferencing platform in use. Full audio-visual meeting recordings will be stored in the Open Voice Network Google Workspace, within a folder titled specifically for that Committee, Work Group, or Community. An announcement of “this meeting is being recorded” will be made at the beginning of every meeting. Notes will be taken of all Technical Committee meetings, published within 48 hours in the OVON GitHub docs file.
- At the START of the meeting:
- Start the recording
- Identify the meeting attendees who will take and publish meeting notes
- Read the meeting invocation and antitrust guidelines
- Give any new attendees an opportunity to introduce themselves
- DURING the meeting:
- Follow the meeting agenda
- Pay attention to the clock; end on time.
- At the END of the meeting:
- Identify deliverables and responsible parties
- AFTER the meeting:
- Publish meeting notes
- Publish meeting recording
The Open Voice Network uses the following document management, communication, and collaboration tools:
- A GitHub repository for technical document management and review, at https://github.com/open-voice-network.
The Open Voice Network GitHub repository is the OVON's source of organizational truth for three key
constituencies: 1) Linux Foundation leadership, 2) Open Voice Network sponsors and Steering Committee
members, and 3) Prospective sponsors and technical participants. Final strategic documents, Technical
Committee deliverables and milestones, and all technical development will be posted or published in GitHub.
- It is recommended that final versions of strategic documents (white papers, position papers) be posted as pdf files within relevant folders.
- Is it expected that
- Technical Committee deliverables and milestones be managed and reviewed through the OVON GitHub Repository.
- technical development (code, proposed protocols, etc.) will be posted/managed/reviewed within and through the OVON GitHub Repository.
- Slack for instant messaging and quick issue resolution. Participants will be added to the OVN Slack channels upon invitation to the OVON Technical Committee or Technical Committee Work Group, or one of the OVON Communities. To request participation in the OVON Slack Channels, please e-mail the OVON Executive Director (jon.stine@openvoicenetwork.org).
- A Google Workspace for
- the collaborative development of strategic documents, should the Committee/Work Group/Community Moderator determine that the Google Workspace will provide the most effective and efficient way to enable participation and drive delivery;
- the storage of meeting recordings and non-technical meeting artifacts and notes;
- meeting scheduling and participant management through the Open Voice Network Google Workspace calendar (see https://openvoicenetwork.org/calendar/). Through this, Committee, Work Group, and Community Moderators will have full access to add or subtract particpants to regularly scheduled meetings.
- Zoom for the hosting of Open Voice Network video-audio conference calls and webinars.
- Open Voice Network collaborative document development may be pursued in either the OVON GitHub docs repository or the OVON Google Workspace. The choice will be managed by the Moderator of the OVON Committee, Work Group, or Community.
- Version Control in Google Workspace. The Moderator of the OVON Committee, Work Group, or Community is responsible for managing version control for documents developed in the OVON Google Workspace. All Google Workspace documents are to be version identified and dated; in addition, the version identification must also state "replaces version X.0". Authors and contributors must be named.
- Public-facing documents (whether for distribution or review) are to be posted in GitHub (in Markdown, PDF, or other standard document format). For those documents seeking broad public distribution, it is strongly recommended that a PDF of the document be posted on the Open Voice Network website, https://www.openvoicenetwork.org.
- Technical Committee and Technical Committee Work Group code and proposed protocols (from 0.1 to final) must be published and managed in the OVON GitHub repository.
- Day-to-Day Tasks within Work Groups, Communities, or Task Forces. Day-to-day tasks (task, responsibility, accountability, deadline) for Technical Committee Work Groups, Communities, and Task Forces are to be documented and reviewed at the beginning of each meeting. These may be managed in the OVON GitHub Repo, Trello, or a team-or moderator-preferred tool.
- Annual, Bi-Annual, and Quarterly Deliverables and Milestones. Each Technical Committee Work Group will establish in the OVON GitHub repo its annual, bi-annual, and quarterly deliverables and milestones. These will reside within the Technical Committee Project. This will enable one view of performance, visible to OVON leaders, staff, Steering Committee members and sponsors, and LF managers.
Working groups are the teams that execute work against the activities. When a working group exists, they accountable for issue documentation, backlog management, and document development into the OVON GitHub repository. Working Groups will also form and define their own leads/leadership.
Technical Committee Work Groups formed:
- Architecture Work Group
- formed in 6/26/20 Technical Committee meeting
- Privacy & Security Work Group
- formed in 6/26/20 Technical Committee meeting
- Voice Registry System (VRS) Work Group
Open Voice Network Technical Committee Work Groups are formed by the Technical Committee to research and recommend a solution or way forward on a topic determined to be of importance to the OVON mission. Recommendations are to be brought back to the Technical Committee, which may forward the recommendation to the OVON Steering Committee for endorsement and/or the allocation of resources.
Work Groups are:
- Moderated by one or more regular participants in the Work Group
- expected to conduct business in a manner that is open, professional, and in keeping with the OVON Communities Code of Conduct found at <www.openvoicenetwork.org>
- expected to seek a diversity of views, and to welcome minority viewpoints and robust discussion
- asked to seek consensus decisions (and if a consensus cannot be reached, to achieve a decision by at least a two-thirds majority)
- expected to begin and close meetings with a review of outstanding and new issues, respectively
The OVON documentation repository contains published and work in progress artifacts, docs, schemas, technical committee working group meeting minutes, etc of the OVON. The documentation repository is organized by working group, with a separate folder for the technical committee.
Depending on your comfort and permission, there are multiple ways you may find yourself contributing via:
- Fork + PR -- this approach is only needed if you don't have write access directly to the repo. See this for help: https://guides.github.com/activities/forking/
- Branch + PR - this approach is used if you already have write access to the repo. See this for help: https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/
New to Git and not comfortable doing things in the command line? If you prefer to work with a GUI, GitHub does allow either approach above all within the UI.
Whatever steps you followed above, you will end in a Pull Request, also known as PR. This is required for
all changes to this repo. Do not commit directly to the master branch.
In the PR process, you will not see your changes right away. It is an area of discussion where the reviewer can ask for more questions or clarification about the changes you made. It is best practice, but not required to add/refer-to the issue number in the PR comments so it is easier to understand the context and background for why the PR is being made.
The [OVON Intellectual Property Policy]({{ site.baseurl }}{% link OVON-Intellectual-Property-Policy.md %}) describes the licensing requirements for any contributed or published material. The Linux Foundation provides information on how to comply with the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) at https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/dco.