Governance Model / ACPGM

[Ronald_Reagan]

First: Forgive me if some of these thoughts are a bit disorganized or somewhat irrelevant. Unfortunately this is how my brain works and I haven't put a bunch of time into editing and refining this post.

What is the intention to the yearly donation? It feels like a barrier to entry which doesn't seem prudent. Perhaps this is because this org proposal doesn't outline how others can contribute code, assets, ideas, and debate while not being part of the org.

One thing that makes sense for me is drawing a line between development and operations. Relating this to open source projects with paid platforms (companies like Hashicorp, Grafana, Gitlab fall are similar) makes sense to me. Anyone can download and run the code that backs their product offering. However they have a paid cloud based solution that allows them to employ a team, maintain their cloud, and turn a profit. Naturally AC's goal isn't to turn a profit, and our platform offering is currently fairly light (it needs to be to run on donations). Additionally we aren't bringing in substantial money so we can't have employees, we can only have volunteers.

All of this to say, I think it would make sense to have an understanding of someone who is incorporated into the organization (our "employees"), and people who are outside but contribute in meaningful ways. The contributors send in patches, and can contribute to discussions and whatever else. However the organization determines what patches to accept, what the direction of the project is, and decisions about what the platform offering will be.


Community
I don't like the name of the "community". This is because the community can also just mean the playerbase. I might look at other opensource projects, non-profits, or co-ops for inspiration for a better name.

• If the committee excludes a community member, the community members can reject this decision.
  

Excludes from what? Further down it indicates its the right of the committee to exclude community members

• Applications for joining shall be addressed to the committee which shall decide upon acceptance or non-acceptance.
  

So process to join the "community" is to put in an application, the committee then votes to approve? After approval the applicant then has to donate (this feels less like a donation and more of a membership fee) in order to make it official? Can someone be booted from the "community"?

Do various team members (of the committee, platform, and dev teams) need to be part of the community and therefore require the donation?

Committee

I don't fully understand the roles & responsibilities of the committee. This could be spelled out a bit more. Maybe something like:

1. In conjunction with the dev team decides the direction of project. This could be something where the committee could "veto" a feature contribution.
   
2. Decide fund allocation for the project
   
3. Financial accounting 
   
4. Organize events and the community (playerbase, not the organization's "community")
   

Additionally I feel like the name of this is a bit confusing. Committee feels synonymous to "team" so I might lean towards calling this the administrative committee or oversight committee.

• The committee may invite or exclude community members any time.
  
• The committee may invite or exclude platform team members any time.
  
• The committee may invite or exclude dev team members any time.
  

Exclude from what?

Dev Team

• Publish an AC release at least once a year [2]
  

I like this for the reason you specified.


Overall I think the dev team needs more clarity into if this is the only way to contribute to the game itself. I'd hope we could continue to take contributions from outside of the organization.