!! Terms Of Service

! Elected Posts
The elected posts in this organization shall run for the duration of one calendar year. The posts are:
* The Development Project Manager (DPM)
* The Communications Project Manager (CPM)
* The Business Manager

These terms shall run in sync with our fiscal year used for tax and accounting purposes. It is proposed that the fiscal year follows the calendar year (Jan 1 - Dec 31):

In the special case of the initial election, the terms shall run for one calendar year PLUS the number of months required to get in sync with the fiscal year. In other words, the first term will run for more than one year.

The office holders may run for re-election as often as they wish.

Four weeks notice is requested if an office holder must step down from his or her position. If more than half of the term remains to be filled, an election will be scheduled to fill the post if candidates can be found. Otherwise a caretaker will be appointed by the rest of the Leadership Committee.

!Delegated Posts
The terms for delegated posts (Release Leaders, Translations Managers, etc.) are at the discretion of the respective manager and may be altered by that manager’s successor in office. Four weeks notice is requested if a delegated post holder must step down from their position.

!Group Volunteers
The terms for these volunteer posts are on-going. The volunteers are free to change group memberships, join more than one group, or quit at their discretion.

Membership in any group may be terminated by the relevant group project manager. This would most likely take the form of removing access to web modules, etc. It is recommended that the matter is first handled privately. The member is free, and should be encouraged, to move to help elsewhere

!Corporate Steward
The term for the Corporate Steward shall be two years, renewable by petition during the bi-annual election. It is possible for other sponsors to petition for the steward position during the bi-annual election.

In the event of dissatisfaction in the community with the current Corporate Steward, the leadership committee shall meet with the Corporate Steward Liaison in a timely manner to try to amicably resolve any issues. In the event that a resolution cannot be reached, a confidence vote will be called by the committee to vote on the replacement of the current Steward. The Corporate Steward agrees to abide by the results of this vote and will begin the process of transferring ownership of SME Server Inc. and will turn over the assets and other IP of the community back to the community.  This process shall be completed 120 days after the initial notification.

!!Standard Voting / Polling Procedures

In order to obtain the pulse of our community in a reliable manner, standard procedures will be followed in order to:
* Hold elections
* Poll the community for opinions on which direction to follow on contentious issues
* Poll the community and the volunteer groups on what to include in the next release(s)
* Other items as determined by the Leadership Committee.

!Committee Member Campaigns

The elections for Committee members shall occur yearly over a five (5) week period beginning November 25. The first two weeks are made available for registered community members to sign up to stand (run) for an office. An email address will be made available for this purpose. The sign-up process will require their name, their site name, a brief paragraph of no more than 150 words describing their qualifications for office, and a valid email address. The existing committee members will contact each candidate using this address to confirm their intention to run (stand) for office.

The sign-up period will close at midnight Dec 9, UMT. Suitable methods will be used to provide the candidates to display their qualifications, interact with the community, etc. The method chosen is to utilize the best functionality available to the community at the time of the election. Voting procedures will also follow these guidelines.

!Committee Member Election

The Committee Member Election will occur over a minimum period of ten (10) days, beginning after December 16. This period is to completely include two (2) full weekends worldwide. Any user registered on the community website is eligible to cast one (1) vote. Users will be asked to vote only once apiece, and the honor system will be used. If possible, the results of the vote will not be displayed to the community until one (1) hour after the voting period is over. The results will be displayed in a News item on the community website home page. Premature disclosure of the ongoing results of the poll to anyone, by anyone with administrative access to the website, will be considered tampering and will be grounds to declare the election void.

A simple majority of the votes cast is required to be elected. In the event of a tie vote, a run off election will be scheduled for the next weekend, to last for a period of no more than 72 hours, centered on 12:01 AM Sunday morning UMT. If this election results in a tie as well, the outgoing committee members will choose the successful candidate.  In the special case of the first election, the runoff vote may be repeated until the issue is resolved.

The execution of this election and review of its procedures will be an item in the last committee meeting of the outgoing committee members, occurring in December. The first official meeting of the new committee members will occur in January.  It is expected that the outgoing (if any) committee members will be invited to attend this meeting as guests for the sake of continuity.

It is expected that the period between these two committee meetings will be used by the new committee members to familiarize themselves with the ongoing projects of the previous committee member, and documented duties, etc.  Outgoing members are to be available for questions to assist the Corporate Sponsor and/or SME Inc. Treasurer in the preparartion of the financial report for the previous year, and the prepared tax docs for submission to the appropriate authorities.

!Constitutional Ratification

Once declared complete by a majority of the members of the authoring team, the SME Server Community Constitution (this document) will be placed in a publicly available location for a minimum period of two (2) weeks. The presence of this document will be announced in a News item on the home page of the community website, and as a "sticky" item at the top of the General Discussion Forum, with a date for the Ratification Election to begin.

!Amendment Procedure

An election to amend the constitution may be called by the Leadership Committee at any time that is not coincident with a previously scheduled election. The Amendment Election shall be called by either a simple majority of the Leadership Committee, or by formal presentation to the committee, as a scheduled item of business, of a petition signed by a minimum of twenty-five (25) registered members of the community website. The exact text of the proposed amendment must exist at the time the election is called; any changes to that text will require that the election be canceled and a new one started. The proposed amendment will be placed in a publicly available location for a minimum period of two (2) weeks. The presence of this document will be announced in a News item on the home page of the community website, and as a "sticky" item at the top of the General Discussion Forum, with a date for the Ratification Election to begin.

!Ratification Election

The Ratification Election will occur over a minimum period of ten (10) days. This period is to completely include two (2) full weekends worldwide. Any user registered on the community website is eligible to cast one (1) vote. Users will be asked to vote only once apiece, and the honor system will be used. The results of the vote will not be displayed to the community until one (1) hour after the voting period is over. The results will be displayed in a News item on the community website home page. Premature disclosure of the ongoing results of the poll to anyone, by anyone with administrative access to the website, will be considered tampering and will be grounds to declare the
election void. 

A simple majority of the votes cast is required for the constitution or amendment to be ratified and adopted by the community. In the event that a majority is not reached, an attempt will be made, via the forum and/or informal polls, to determine what change(s) need to be made to achieve ratification. Once these changes are made, the constitution or amendment will be posted and an election scheduled per the procedures above. In the event that the constitution or amendment fails to achieve a simple majority after three (3) elections, the constitution or amendment will be scrapped.

After each Ratification Election, the Board of Directors shall formally adopt or drop the constitution or amendment as directed by the community's decision.

!Licensing Issues

This section will provide for policies that affirm our intent to respect the licenses of all software and other intellectual property that is included in SME Server or is made available as an addition for the community, and to support and enforce the licenses applied to software by community members. It is not intended to require that any specific license be used for software packages, though favored licenses will be suggested, and may be applied as a default.

The Leadership Committee is charged with the duty of establishing an initial 'SME Licensing Policy' upon election.  This newly adopted policy will be followed by the groups with respect to software and documentation distribution, website content, and will be enforced by any license compliance team or committee that the BM may create for this purpose.  Any licensing policy that is adopted by the committee must adhere to the following principles:

Software Licensing
The licenses for all software included in or added to SME Server must meet one of the following two conditions:
1. License Conditions
- Full sources must be available to the community to allow us to build identical binaries
- The sources must be modifiable by the community
- The community must be able to distribute modified sources
- The community must be able to distribute binaries from the modified sources
     - The software must be available to use free of charge or royalty

2. Waiver Process
Any software that does not fall into the first category must be reviewed by an existing license compliance team or the Leadership Committee.  If suitable cause for using the code as-is legally in the distribution can be justified (ex. - device drivers) then the first condition will be waived.  If the existing license precludes our inclusion in the distribution or as a contribution then the license owner must be contacted and a special waiver should be obtained to meet most, if not all, of the stipulations in the first condition for the SME Server distribution only.  If this is not possible, then the existing license compliance team or Leadership Committee shall review the legal implications of using the software with the license in question, and must obtain legal advice when necessary. 

A specific waiver is granted for the licenses of software packages already in use, up to and including any packages included in the release version of SME 7.

It is the intent of this section to encourage the creation of a formal process to help the SME developer group include software packages in the SME Server distribution that are deemed desirable, but that may have licensing issues.

Other Licensing
The licenses for all documentation, how-to's, website submissions, etc. should meet the following conditions:
- A non-exclusive, perpetual right to publish, modify and distribute any submissions or contributions is granted.
- Rights may be assigned to the corporation for enforcement purposes if desired.
- The contribution must be available to use free of charge or royalty

A default license for software and website contributions will be agreed to as part of the registration process.  The relevant license will be applied to all content hosted on the community websites.  Provision will be made for each community member to apply their preferred license if the default is unacceptable, but the individual must manually specify the alternate license each time they do not wish to use the default license.