**Aaru**, an open source project, is committed to building an open, inclusive, and productive open source community focused on delivering a high quality tool that for backing up (dumping) various types of computer and game console media.
* **Contributors:** Regular contributions to projects (documentation, code reviews, responding to issues, participation in proposal discussions, contributing code, etc.).
* **Technical committee**: Provide input and feedback on roadmap items, grounded in common use cases for the committee member's organizations. Committee members might sponsor certain aspects of the project, however sponsorships are not a requirement for a committee member role.
* **Maintainers**: The Aaru project leaders. They are responsible for the overall health and direction of the project; final reviewers of PRs and responsible for releases. Some Maintainers are responsible for one or more components within a project, acting as technical leads for that component. Maintainers are expected to contribute code and documentation, review PRs including ensuring quality of code, triage issues, proactively fix bugs, and perform maintenance tasks for these components.
New maintainers must be nominated by an existing maintainer and must be elected by a supermajority of existing maintainers. Likewise, maintainers can be removed by a supermajority of the existing maintainers or can resign by notifying one of the maintainers.
New technical committee members must be nominated by an existing member and must be elected by a supermajority of existing members. Likewise, members can be removed by a supermajority of the existing members or can resign by notifying one of the members.
A supermajority is defined as two-thirds of members in the group.
A supermajority of [Maintainers](MAINTAINERS.md) is required for certain decisions as outlined above. A supermajority vote is equivalent to the number of votes in favor being at least twice the number of votes against. For example, if you have 5 maintainers, a supermajority vote is 4 votes. Voting on decisions can happen on the mailing list, GitHub, Discord, email, or via a voting service, when appropriate. Maintainers can either vote "agree, yes, +1", "disagree, no, -1", or "abstain". A vote passes when supermajority is met. An abstain vote equals not voting at all.
The community functions best when it can reach broad consensus about a way forward. However, it is not uncommon in the open-source world for there to be multiple good arguments, no clear consensus, and for open questions to divide communities rather than enrich them. The debate absorbs the energy that might otherwise have gone towards the creation of a solution. In many cases, there is no one ‘right’ answer, and what is needed is a decision more than a debate. The SABDFL acts to provide clear leadership on difficult issues, and set the pace for the project.
