Objective
Set a clear plan for ClassicPress Initiative and the project once new directors take over.
Non-Profit
The ClassicPress Initiative (CPI) is a legal entity that must be managed by three directors as outlined in the bylaws. Three individuals volunteered to take on the responsibilities:
All three have been around ClassicPress for many years and want the project to succeed.
CPI has three main objectives:
- Fund ClassicPress project
- Manage ClassicPress infrastructure
- Manage business operations (forum, Slack, emails, bills, websites, etc.)
CPI will continue to be the owner of the project infrastructure. This ownership model eliminates any one individual from being in charge and prevents egos from getting in the way. This model also provides limited liability to everyone involved.
As a registered non-profit, CPI can fundraise money for the project’s expenses. Donations are tax-deductible in the US. The Open Source Guide recommends a non-profit if taking donations. No one should be personally responsible for the project’s expenses.
CPI’s initial goals once new directors take over:
- Fundraising will be the top priority. Our initial fundraising goal will be $1200/year or $100/mo. That should cover all the expenses.
- Cut expenses.
- Simplify server infrastructure to cut expenses and make it easier to manage. William Patton will help with server management/operations.
Ensuring that those in the CP community with the skills and motivation to get work done have access to the facilities they need to do just that.
Directors that go MIA for more than 30 days without warning and attempts to contact them go answered will result in termination as a director of CPI. The remaining directors can appoint an interim director and begin searching for a new director.
For transparency, CPI will post monthly financials for the previous month.
ClassicPress Project
The project includes ClassicPress core, directory, documentation, etc.
CPI directors do not want the full responsibility of running the entire project. While the Directors will, as individuals, contribute to the development of the ClassicPress software, that is not the role of the ClassicPress Initiative, whose role is set out above. The development of the software is a community effort, which the CPI will support.
We are not in favor of having a rigid committee (or “council”) structure. ClassicPress did try the “committee” approach between 2018-2020. Unfortunately, it did not work out as expected and caused frequent disagreements between the members. Voting on issues became divisive and was one of the primary reasons for project stalling.
As members left or became less active with the pandemic in full swing, the committees were dissolved, and directors took on the responsibilities no one wanted to keep the project alive.
History should not repeat itself, and we must learn from it. Making decisions is worthless if those decisions cannot or are not acted upon. It is instead much more important that we focus on encouraging and facilitating people to actually contribute.
We do not want to be back at square one in a year with directors managing everything. The community must manage the project with the support of the CPI, though we envision that @MattyRob will continue to lead core development. Matt is happy to let someone with the necessary experience and willingness lead core development.
Access
Access to the infrastructure will be given to contributors doing the work on a “needs” basis. Anyone receiving access credentials must sign an NDA to ensure they do not share credentials with anyone and to protect user data for security and privacy compliance.
Thousands of users rely on ClassicPress to be a secure platform and ecosystem. We must ensure we do everything we can to maintain a high level of security.
ClassicPress used to have “team leads.” They were responsible for different projects, such as documentation, translations, core, etc. It worked well as long as they were active and doing their agreed work. This model may be worth revisiting and allow team leads to maintain access to their systems.
Petitions
It’s important for the community to share feedback and participate in the development of ClassicPress. We’ve had petitions since day one, and they’ve helped improve ClassicPress over the last four years. However, they didn’t live up to the expectations we all had.
We will be implementing the following changes to the Petitions:
-
Petitions will be renamed “Feature Requests” in the forum and everywhere else.
-
Voting will be disabled. If you want to show support for a request, leave a reply and explain why you think it’s a good request. If you think it’s not the right request for ClassicPress, voice your concerns.
-
All new feature requests will be moderated and must be approved by a moderator to be published in the forum.
-
All feature requests must follow the specified template. Feature requests that do not follow the template will be rejected, and the requester will be asked to re-submit using the template.
-
Feature requests that are far-fetched or have a solution, will be declined.
-
Once published, core contributors and community members can comment on it and decide if it’s feasible or not.
-
WordPress backports as feature requests will be declined. Backports must be submitted as an issue in the GitHub repo to engage the core team in a discussion.
This will require changes to the dashboard widget. The API data used by the dashboard widget will be frozen temporarily until the widget is updated in one of the upcoming releases.
Forum
- Rules will be enforced.
- Personal attacks and bullying will not be tolerated. Repeat offenders will be banned from the community forum.
- Rudeness, especially directed at first-time posters seeking help, will not be tolerated. Users that may be angry because their website broke should not be attacked but allowed to cool off. Being condescending in your replies is rude and will not be tolerated. Many users are not developers and have little to no technical knowledge. They need guidance. First-posters should not be only-time posters because they get rude replies instead of help.
- If referencing a conversation from Slack, it is advisable to copy/paste the conversation to the forum since Slack messages are deleted due to the plan’s limits.