chore: add governance

[ematipico]

Summary

A first draft of the governance. All @biomejs/core-contributors must approve this PR before being merged.

Test Plan

Review it and approve it

[nissy-dev]

LGTM 👍 Thank you for spending much time on thinking the governance model!

[unvalley]

It might be okay to add this later, but it would be good to have an example of what specific contributions should be made in order to be in a certain role. I haven't seen that in many other repositories though.

[bnb]

Hey! I've worked in Node.js, Electron, and the OpenJS Foundation for a number of years on various Governance tasks. I'm excited and hopeful for biome, and wanted to take this opportunity to communicate some of the lessons I've learned over the years in hopes it'll be helpful for y'all, accelerate the project's maturity, and help you avoid some pain.

No worries if you don't take any of the advice or suggestions, but did just want to put them out there for you.

[bnb]

act as tiebreakers

if they are acting as tiebreakers, you'll likely want to either ensure that one lead is a tiebreaker, or that there will otherwise always be a way to ensure a decision rather than a stalemate (50/50).

[Conaclos]

An odd number of leaders could avoid the issue?

[ematipico]

I updated the document, only one lead should step up and make the decision.

@Conaclos that wouldn't work. Being a lead is essentially being a core contributor with more burden (conflict resolution rights, holding sensitive info/assets). We can't force people to join only because we require an odd number.

[bnb]

One of the hardest lessons I learned from the io.js Governance Structure that ended up as the Node.js Governance Structure was that the decision to never remove inactive members was perhaps one of the biggest barriers to progress. Eventually, we introduced an emeritus system that IMO has been extremely helpful in distinguishing who is an active contributor vs. who once was but is not longer active.

The Emeritus system also helps ensure a more secure environment, since inactive accounts don't have push permissions, while still allowing for recognition and an easy way to start working again (simply ask to be re-added to the project from emeritus status, and you will be).

To be in good conscience, I feel obligated to at least leave a comment urging you to consider a way to build-in a system to step-down or off-board people who are inactive after having worked in such a system without an escape hatch like Emeritus for so long.

[bnb]

As a non-binary person, I appreciate the last part here, but generally disclosing gender isn't something I'd expect to be done. My guess is that you meant pronouns and used gender as a proxy for that, so here's two suggestions on how to tweak this:

Suggested change

	Members are listed in alphabetical order. Members are free to use the full name, GitHub handle, or any other nickname they wish to be addressed. Members are free to disclose their gender.
	Members are listed in alphabetical order. Members are free to use the full name, GitHub handle, or any other nickname they wish to be addressed. Members are free to disclose their gender and pronouns.

Suggested change

	Members are listed in alphabetical order. Members are free to use the full name, GitHub handle, or any other nickname they wish to be addressed. Members are free to disclose their gender.
	Members are listed in alphabetical order. Members are free to use the full name, GitHub handle, or any other nickname they wish to be addressed. Members are free to disclose their pronouns.

[bnb]

I would strongly recommend keeping these documented in a different place. Governance is usually more of a static document, and parts that are going to be changing with frequency are often better kept elsewhere both to make them easier to change and to allow easier historical parsing of a Governance doc. Going through 50 membership changes to find a specific language change is often less than ideal.

[ematipico]

@unvalley

It might be okay to add this later, but it would be good to have an example of what specific contributions should be made in order to be in a certain role. I haven't seen that in many other repositories though.

I added a paragraph: https://github.com/biomejs/biome/blob/chore/governance/GOVERNANCE.md#contributions

[ematipico]

Hey! I've worked in Node.js, Electron, and the OpenJS Foundation for a number of years on various Governance tasks. I'm excited and hopeful for biome, and wanted to take this opportunity to communicate some of the lessons I've learned over the years in hopes it'll be helpful for y'all, accelerate the project's maturity, and help you avoid some pain.

No worries if you don't take any of the advice or suggestions, but did just want to put them out there for you.

Thank you @bnb ! I reviewed your comments and made the suggested changes. About the "off-boarding" system, what do you recommend? Any word of advice? I rephrased the paragraph, but I am not sure I am on the right track.

@denbezrukov @unvalley since you had questions, I dismissed your approval and requested a review again. I would prefer to have all the questions answered first.

[unvalley]

Thank you for update!

[Conaclos]

I left some comments.

We could also add a diagram to highlight roles and how one is promoted to another. However, this is an enhancement we can do later.