# wayland-protocols governance This document governs the maintenance of wayland-protocols and serves to outline the broader process for standardization of protocol extensions in the Wayland ecosystem. ## 1. Membership Membership in wayland-protocols is offered to stakeholders in the Wayland ecosystem who have an interest in participating in protocol extension standardization. ### 1.1. Membership requirements 1. Membership is extended to projects, rather than individuals. 2. Members represent general-purpose projects with a stake in multiple Wayland protocols (e.g. compositors, GUI toolkits, etc), rather than special-purpose applications with a stake in only one or two. 3. Each project must provide one or two named individuals as points-of-contact for that project who can be reached to discuss protocol-related matters. 4. During a vote, if two points-of-contact for the same member disagree, the member's vote is considered blank. ### 1.2. Becoming a member 1. New members who meet the criteria outlined in 1.1 are established by invitation from an existing member. Projects hoping to join should reach out to an existing member asking for this invitation. 2. New members shall write to the wayland-devel mailing list stating their intention of joining and their sponsor. 3. The sponsor shall respond acknowledging their sponsorship of the membership. 4. A 14 day discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members will be held. 5. At the conclusion of the discussion period, the new membership is established unless their application was NACKed by a 1/2 majority of all existing members. ### 1.3. Ceasing membership 1. A member may step down by writing their intention to do so to the wayland-devel mailing list. 2. A removal vote may be called for by an existing member by posting to the wayland-devel mailing list. This begins a 14 day voting & discussion period. 3. At the conclusion of the voting period, the member is removed if the votes total 2/3rds of all current members. 4. Removed members are not eligible to apply for membership again for a period of 1 year. 5. Following a failed vote, the member who called for the vote cannot call for a re-vote or propose any other removal for 90 days. ## 2. Protocols ### 2.1. Protocol namespaces 1. Namespaces are implemented in practice by prefixing each interface name in a protocol definition (XML) with the namespace name, and an underscore (e.g. "xdg_wm_base"). 2. Protocols in a namespace may optionally use the namespace followed by a dash in the name (e.g. "xdg-shell"). 3. The "xdg" namespace is established for protocols letting clients configure its surfaces as "windows", allowing clients to affect how they are managed. 4. The "wp" namespace is established for protocols generally useful to Wayland implementations (i.e. "plumbing" protocols). 5. The "ext" namespace is established as a general catch-all for protocols that fit into no other namespace. ### 2.2. Protocol inclusion requirements 1. All protocols found in the "xdg" and "wp" namespaces at the time of writing are grandfathered into their respective namespace without further discussion. 2. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespace are eligible for inclusion only if ACKed by at least 3 members. 3. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespace are ineligible for inclusion if if NACKed by any member. 4. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespaces must have at least 3 open-source implementations (either 1 client + 2 servers, or 2 clients + 1 server) to be eligible for inclusion. 5. Protocols in the "ext" namespace are eligible for inclusion only if ACKed by at least 2 members. 6. Protocols in the "ext" namespace must have at least one open-source client & one open-source server implementation to be eligible for inclusion. 7. "Open-source" is defined as distributed with an Open Source Initiative approved license. ### 2.3. Introducing new protocols 1. A new protocol may be proposed by submitting a merge request to the wayland-protocols Gitlab repository. 2. Protocol proposal posts must include justification for their inclusion in their namespace per the requirements outlined in section 2.2. 3. An indefinite discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members will be held, with a minimum duration of 30 days. Protocols which require a certain level of implementation status, ACKs from members, and so on, should use this time to acquire them. 4. When the proposed protocol meets all requirements for inclusion per section 2.2, and the minimum discussion period has elapsed, the sponsoring member may merge their changes in the wayland-protocol repository. 5. Amendments to existing protocols may be proposed by the same process, with no minimum discussion period. 6. Declaring a protocol stable may be proposed by the same process, with the regular 30 day minimum discussion period. ## 3. Protocol adoption documentation ### 3.1. Adoption website 1. This section is informational. 2. A website will be made available for interested parties to browse the implementation status of protocols included in wayland-protocols. 3. A statement from each member of wayland-protocols will be included on the site. 4. Each protocol will be listed along with its approval status from each member. 5. The approval statuses are: 1. NACK, or "negative acknowledgement", meaning that the member is opposed to the protocol in principle. 2. NOPP, or "no opposition", meaning that the member is not opposed to the protocol in principle, but does not provide an implementation. 3. ACK, or "acknowledged", meaning that the member supports the protocol in principle, but does not provide an implementation. 4. IMPL, or "implemented", meaning that the member supports the protocol and provides an implementation. 6. Each member may write a short statement expanding on the rationale for their approval status, which will be included on the site. 7. A supplementary list of implementations will also be provided on the site, which may include implementations supported by non-members. ### 3.2. Changes to the adoption website 1. This section is informational. 2. A new protocol is added to the website by the sponsoring member at the conclusion of the discussion period (section 2.3.3). 3. During the discussion period (section 2.3.3), interested parties may express their approval status on the Gitlab merge request. The default approval status for members who do not participate in the discussion is "NOPP". 4. Members may change their acknowledgement status or support statement at any time after the discussion period (section 2.3.3) has closed by simply merging their update in the wayland-protocols repository. ## 4. Amending this document 1. An amendment to this document may be proposed any member by submitting a merge request on Gitlab. 2. A 30 day discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members will be held. 3. At the conclusion of the discussion period, an amendment will become effective if it's ACKed by at least 2/3rds of all wayland-protocols members, and NACKed by none. The sponsoring member may merge their change to the wayland-protocols repository at this point.