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GOVERNANCE.md

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+TLDR; ELMS:LN is a do-ocracy, it happens to have someone ensuring the original vision of the project is kept intact to maximize social good.
+
+## Overview
+This project is led by a benevolent dictator and managed by the community. That is, the community actively contributes to the day-to-day maintenance of the project, but the general strategic line and vision statement of the project is drawn by the benevolent dictator. In case of major disagreement, they have the last word. It is the benevolent dictator’s job to resolve disputes within the community assoicated with technical direction and methodology in order to make coordinated progress. In turn, it is the community’s job to guide the decisions of the benevolent dictator through active engagement and contribution.
+
+## Vision of the Benevolent dictator
+This is the vision statement as laid out by Bryan Ollendyke, btopro, the first project lead of ELMS: Learning Network. I write this to ensure that with every decision made we're keeping these ideals in mind. It's also to help new members know where we really want to go and who we want to be.
+
+### The goals of ELMS: Learning Network
+- To fundamentally transform education in teaching, learning and training through engaging experiences.
+- To create deeper connections and understanding between learners, educators, and the whole of humanity.
+- To improve universal access to education through affordability, usability, accessibility and decentralization.
+- To strive toward zero cost education through the production of open source technologies, libraries, content, and schemata.
+- To create a pathway toward sustainable innovation in educational technology.
+- To make the web at large freer, more accessible, cost less to produce, and be more engaging then it was before us.
+
+By focusing on these ideals of improving access to education, using open source as a vehicle of change, we can improve the world around us. We will.
+
+## Roles And Responsibilities
+Benevolent dictator (project lead)
+Typically, the benevolent dictator, or project lead, is self-appointed. However, because the community always has the ability to fork, this person is fully answerable to the community. The project lead’s role is a difficult one: they set the strategic objectives of the project and communicate these clearly to the community. They also have to understand the community as a whole and strive to satisfy as many conflicting needs as possible, while ensuring that the project survives in the long term.
+
+In many ways, the role of the benevolent dictator is less about dictatorship and more about diplomacy. The key is to ensure that, as the project expands, the right people are given influence over it and the community rallies behind the vision of the project lead. The lead’s job is then to ensure that the committers (see below) make the right decisions on behalf of the project. Generally speaking, as long as the committers are aligned with the project’s strategy, the project lead will allow them to proceed as they desire.
+
+### Core contributors
+Core contributors are contributors who have made several valuable contributions to the project and are now relied upon to both write code directly to the repository and screen the contributions of others. In many cases they are programmers but it is also possible that they contribute in a different role. Typically, a core contributor will focus on a specific aspect of the project, and will bring a level of expertise and understanding that earns them the respect of the community and the project lead. The role of committer is not an official one, it is simply a position that influential members of the community will find themselves in as the project lead looks to them for guidance and support.
+
+Core contributors have no authority over the overall direction of the project but may be the lead for a sub-system there in. ELMS:LN is a system of systems and as such it is possible to have multiple Core contributor leads to different efforts within that context. However, they do have the ear of the project lead. It is a core contributor's job to ensure that the lead is aware of the community’s needs and collective objectives, and to help develop or elicit appropriate contributions to the project. Often, committers are given informal control over their specific areas of responsibility, and are assigned rights to directly modify certain areas of the source code. That is, although Core contributors do not have explicit decision-making authority, they will often find that their actions are synonymous with the decisions made by the lead.
+
+### Community Contributors
+Community Contributors are community members who either have no desire to become core contributors, or have not been involved in the project deep enough to take on leadership roles. They make valuable contributions, such as those outlined in the list below, but generally do not have the authority to make direct changes to the project code. Community contributors engage with the project through communication tools, such as email lists, and via reports and patches attached to issues in the issue tracker, as detailed in our community tools document.
+
+Anyone can become a community contributor. There is no expectation of commitment to the project, no specific skill requirements and no selection process. To become a community contributor, a community member simply has to perform one or more actions that are beneficial to the project.
+
+Some contributors will already be engaging with the project as users, but will also find themselves doing one or more of the following:
+
+- supporting new users (current users often provide the most effective new user support)
+- reporting bugs
+- identifying requirements
+- supplying graphics and web design
+- programming
+- assisting with project infrastructure
+- writing documentation
+- fixing bugs
+- adding features
+
+As contributors gain experience and familiarity with the project, they may find that the project lead starts relying on them more and more. When this begins to happen, they gradually adopt the role of committer, as described above.
+
+### Users
+Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community: without them, the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no specific requirements.
+
+Users should be encouraged to participate in the life of the project and the community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user activities include (but are not limited to):
+
+- evangelising about the project
+- informing developers of project strengths and weaknesses from a new user’s perspective
+- providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
+- providing financial support
+
+Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often find themselves becoming more and more involved. Such users may then go on to become contributors, as described above.
+
+## Support
+All participants in the community are encouraged to provide support for new users within the project management infrastructure. This support is provided as a way of growing the community. Those seeking support should recognise that all support activity within the project is voluntary and is therefore provided as and when time allows. A user requiring guaranteed response times or results should therefore seek to purchase a support contract from a vendor. (Of course, that vendor should be an active member of the community.) However, for those willing to engage with the project on its own terms, and willing to help support other users, the community support channels are ideal.
+
+## Contribution Process
+Anyone can contribute to the project, regardless of their skills, as there are many ways to contribute. For instance, a contributor might be active on the project mailing list and issue tracker, or might supply patches. The various ways of contributing are described in more detail in our roles in open source document.
+
+The developer mailing list is the most appropriate place for a contributor to ask for help when making their first contribution.
+
+## Decision-Making Process
+The benevolent dictatorship ultimately has the final work on project contributions being accepted into the project and aligning it's direction. Unlike a pure benevolent dictatorship though, ELMS:LN has a voting process for critical decisions that may impact other Core contributing users adversely. As this is a system of systems, we as a community want to ensure that tough calls associated with platform direction and design get input of many people impacted prior to adoption. This is a critical role for the Core Contributors in this project; staying aware of the needs of the project's Users while balancing their own needs with potentially conflicting goals of fellow Core contributors.
+
+Great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. No one, regardless of status in the community is precluded from contributing potentially ideological shifting ideas into the community. We empower our members and each other to speak up and ensure we have the coolest, most vibrant community possible. How those ideas get implemented, the technologies used, the way it's deployed; these are the types of decisions we're laying out as far as the process involved.
+
+Whenever possible, the ELMS:LN community architecture will attempt to account for and support the uniqueness of it's members to implement the solution how they see fit while still doing so in a sustainable manner. This idea helps influence the decisions to be made when people have legitmate difference of opinion on how to solve something at a technical level, yet need to keep working together for the greater good of the project and their own organizations.