Initial PR outlining the governance for the project

[madolson]

Initial PR to add a governance doc outlining permissions for the main Valkey project as well as define responsibilities for sub-projects.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 68.37%. Comparing base (4693aa2) to head (8cb7eae).
Report is 23 commits behind head on unstable.

Additional details and impacted files

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- Coverage     68.40%   68.37%   -0.04%     
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- Hits          42108    42091      -17     
- Misses        19447    19468      +21     

see 16 files with indirect coverage changes

[natoscott]

@madolson LGTM FWIW :) BTW, there's a typo 'Ericcson' -> 'Ericsson'

[zuiderkwast]

Good job! Is there anything special with the filename GOVERNANCE.md?

Previously, this document was in the doc repo which means it became a page on the website. That's nice too.
https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey-doc/blob/0536b897b00f5d12057477719e3d2e82e5c63fcd/topics/governance.md (or https://web.archive.org/web/20210814154637/https://redis.io/topics/governance)

[madolson]

Good job! Is there anything special with the filename GOVERNANCE.md?
Previously, this document was in the doc repo which means it became a page on the website. That's nice too.
https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey-doc/blob/0536b897b00f5d12057477719e3d2e82e5c63fcd/topics/governance.md (or https://web.archive.org/web/20210814154637/https://redis.io/topics/governance)

My thought process was that since we already recursively copy Valkey for the website, we can simply render the GOVERNANCE.md doc on the website without it being in the doc. I have no strong opinion though.

[zuiderkwast]

My thought process was that since we already recursively copy Valkey for the website, we can simply render the GOVERNANCE.md doc on the website without it being in the doc. I have no strong opinion though.

That may be the current solution for the website, but I don't think it's the best solution. The redis-io website didn't do this afaict, but then instead there's some generated content checked in to the doc repo instead. I think they used the script utils/generate-commands-json.py fetching info from a running node using to produce the JSON which was stored as commands.json in the doc repo, re-generated and updated manually. Probably the reply schemas were generated once, but later edited manually. Eveything else was from the doc repo IIUC.

The separation between doc repo and code repo is not very clear but I'd like to think that the doc repo should be useful on its own, for generating man pages or other things. It's under a different license as well (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Somehow I feel that a lot of documents don't belong in a code repo that you clone, build and install. README and license do and probably a few more. Are these "about" pages (governance, maintainers, code-of-conduct, etc.) part of documentation though? If they target contributors, do they belong in the code repo and if they target users, they are docs?

If we want to link to these from various pages in the docs, it's also a sign that they may be docs.

[madolson]

@soloestoy Would appreciate your feedback when you have a moment. I'm going to wait for explicit approval from 3/5 remaining maintainers before merging.

[PingXie]

LGTM. Thanks @madolson!

[soloestoy]

I'm a bit confused about the relationship between "maintainers" and "TSC". Although currently all TSC members are maintainers of the valkey core repo, but in the future these two groups may be changed separately. I think it would be better to describe them separately.

For example, we could use MAINTAINERS.md in the valkey repo to specifically detail the maintainers of the valkey repo. Additionally, introducing a TSC.md directly under valkey-io (maybe a new governance or TSC repo) to clarify the composition of the TSC, highlighting their role in overseeing all projects under the valkey-io. This setup ensures that any future additions of maintainers for other clients or modules to the TSC wouldn't impact the list of maintainers for the valkey repo.

[madolson]

At least for now, practically maintainers = TSC. I think it makes the most sense to amend the document when that needs to change.

[zuiderkwast]

"the Valkey-io organization" just means the github org. It sounds like were defining our project in terms of whats under the github org, but it's rather the other way around. Can we write it in a different way?

Suggested change

	The Valkey project includes all of the current and future repositories under the Valkey-io organization.
	The Valkey project stores its repositories on GitHub under the valkey-io organization.

[madolson]

I didn't want to tie the governance to specifically to github. Maybe I'll word it like:

The Valkey project includes all of the current and future repositories under the Valkey-io GitHub organization or whatever future code hosting platform the project uses.

?

[zuiderkwast]

Sure. Or just keep it as is. It doesn't matter much.

[PingXie]

is it "Valkey" or "Valkey-io" organization?

[madolson]

It's currently valkey-io organization. We're working on getting valkey though.

[PingXie]

LGTM. some wording recommendation.

[hwware]

I would like to approve this hard work.