charter:This is our charter

[Mike Prince]

11/6/1994 Mike Prince <mprince@crl.com>

Tunes Charter
=============
This document will outline a set of rules to facilitate the parallel 
development of interrelated projects.

Membership Structure
====================
We shall have two types of people in our organization; Coordinators 
for each project or sub-project, and the body of members.  A special 
General Coordinator acts to oversee all the Coordinators.  Their 
responsibilities are;

	General Coordinator
		All projects are subjugated to this Coordinator
		Has final word in settling disputes
		Has same responsibilities as Coordinator, except does not
			have a project of his/her own
		Any other responsibilities defined in the charter
	Coordinator
		Oversees project
		Posts project updates of general interest to announce
		The Coordinator with the most seniority would take over
			the responsibilities of the General Coordinator in
			cases of absence or removal, until a new one could
			be elected
		Any other responsibilities as defined by the project
	Members
		Calls for votes on issues
		Cast votes
		Participate in projects

Voting
======
All decisions can be challenged by a vote.
Any member has a right to call for a vote.
To call for a vote, a member would post the following message to the 
topic "vote".

	CALL FOR VOTE
	Measure:  A short description of the measure.
	Project:  Path of the project being affected by this measure.
	Discussion At:  Path of project discussion will take place in.
	Voting Ends:  Last day to cast a vote.
	Advocate:  Name and e-mail address of the person posting this
		measure.
	Text:  What the measure advocates.

All votes should be sent to the person named as advocate.
When voting ends the person named as advocate sends a list sorted
	into yes and no votes, plus counts to the Coordinator of the 
	project named in the vote.
If the vote passes by at least 2/3 the Coordinator posts the
	measure plus the voting results to "announce" and to the
	affected project
If the vote fails the Coordinator simply posts the voting results
	to "announce".
Once the measure is approved by vote, the measure is added to the
	affected projects list of measures.

Projects
========
The basic organizational unit is the project
	Projects will be arranged hierarchically
	Projects are named
		The root project will be the leftmost in the name.
		Subprojects will be listed from left to right, delimited
		by periods, in order of precedence
	All messages to tunes are directed to projects by including
		the project name before the message description in the
		subject field
	Projects are defined by their charter, measures, and decisions
		The charter is defined initially by the text of the vote
			that created it.
		Measures are put forth by members and decided by votes
		Decisions are made by the project coordinator

We will start with the following projects;

	charter:  The organization structure of our group (as
		defined by this document).  This forum will be used to
		discuss changes to our charter and our groups
		organization.
	vote:  All votes and their results will be announced here, as 	
		well as in the projects in which they affect.  The
		discussion will take place in the project affected by the
		vote.
	discussion:  This will serve as the forum for debating new
		project proposals and votes of general interest.
	announce:  A forum which can only be posted to by the
		Coordinators.  This is used to announce new projects
		and their status, and for Coordinators to update the group
		about on-going projects.

Creating Projects
=================
To create a project a member would call for a vote with the following 
fields appended to the CALL FOR VOTE message.

	REQUEST FOR PROJECT
	New Project Name:  The complete "path" of the project.
	Description:  A short description of the project.
	Goals and Constraints:  The goals of the project and limits to 	
		achieving them.
	Reason:  Why do we need a new project/subproject.  This should
		be at most two paragraphs, which may contain references to
		the Comments section.
	Comments(optional): Descriptive text, references, anything
		deemed necessary but not included above.

The RFP should outline how the project will work, and might include;
	Any additional files that would be maintained
	Additional rules or mechanisms within the project
	An Agenda
	Etc
Voting is conducted normally except when a root project is being
	created, in which case the Head Coordinator receives the results
	of the vote.
The advocate of the vote becomes the Coordinator for the new project.

Project Documents
=================
Each project will have several files to maintain at our central 
archive.

	Each file name shall be prepended by the project path.
	All files in the archive will be at most one month out of date.
	Every file will have as the first line the date it was last
		updated and the person who did the updates name or email
		address.

Here are the minimum files that need to be maintained by the 
Coordinator;

	.charter  This is a copy of the most recent incarnation of the
		charter which defines the project.  If the project was
		created through a vote all ballots cast are listed.
	.talk.MonthYear  This is an archive of all that's been posted
		to that project, stored in mailbox format, and broken down
		by month into separate files.  This should be updated
		within 10 days after the end of each month.
	.vote.measurename  This is the text of a measure that has been
		put to vote for that project and a list of those who have
		cast ballots for or against that measure.
	.decision.decisionname  This is the text of a decision made by
		the project Coordinator.

The charter project will have several additional files;
	.members  A list of members and their e-mail addresses. This
		will initially be derived from the tunes mailserver
	.projects  A list of all projects and their coordinators

Posting Messages
================
Only a Coordinator can post to announce.  Announce will be used to 
update members on the status of projects, proposals for projects, and 
general voting results.  Only calls for votes can be posted to vote.  
All discussion for votes will take place in the project named in the 
Discussion At field of the Call for Vote.  Any member can post a call 
to vote.  All other projects can be posted to by all members.