iTowns Governance

August 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

Preamble

The iTowns project is developed collectively by a diverse community of contributors, comprising independent developers, public organizations, research laboratories, and private companies.

It is governed by rules that guarantee its expansion and the immutability of its open, shared nature. This document formalizes the core values, community structure, and current governance of the iTowns project.

We welcome contributions from new stakeholders or other project actors wishing to propose changes to the governance structure.

Any proposed changes can be submitted via a pull request or through a proposal.

If you wish to propose changes on different topics, please create a separate PR or issue for each topic.

Values

  • Community Driven
    iTowns is a commons, developed collectively by a diverse of contributors. Its open and shared nature is immutable.

  • Licensing
    Operates as free software under the MIT or CeCILL-B license. It permits unrestricted reuse and modifications. Source Code on GitHub

  • Public Benefit First
    The project serves interest and broader public good, above specific private goals.

  • Inclusion and Diversity
    Contributions are welcomed from a diverse range of sources (private and public sector, researchers, individuals, etc.). This is achieved through the meritocratic recognition of contributors.

  • Transparent Collaboration
    All decisions are documented and made openly to ensure trust and long-term sustainability.

  • Compliance
    Contributors must follow established rules and agree to the code of conduct .

  • Peer Reviewing
    Significant contributions are peer-reviewed. Contributors can gain a more significant role by providing high-quality contributions within the established guidelines.

  • Community Sovereignty
    Governance is exercised autonomously by the community, free from external authority.

  • Transparent Planning
    Future developments are publicized and discussed openly before implementation.

  • Continuous Improvement
    The project evolves to stay aligned with state of the art developments in 3D geospatial data.

Role definitions

  • A "User" encompasses an individual or organization using the iTowns framework.
  • A "Contributor" refers to any individual actively involved in improvements to the iTowns project, whether through feature development, documentation additions, bug fixes, suggesting features, or other forms of value. They do not have direct commit access to the main repository. Their contributions are reviewed and merged by core-contributors
  • A "Core contributor" is a trusted contributor with additional responsibilities as described below. Core contributors hold commit rights to the main branch of the project.
  • The "Community" serves as an umbrella term, encompassing users, contributors and other players within the iTowns project.

Core contributors

A "Core contributor" is any contributor holding commit rights to the main branch of the project. These core contributors handle technical governance of the project and guarantee its durability and independence.

Core contributors’ scope

  • Ensure the project's sustainability in terms of maintainability and technical debt
  • Directly committing changes to the main branches.
  • Monitor ongoing developments.
  • Arbitrates decisions on technical architecture and ensures its coherence.
  • Review and merge PRs from others.
  • Enforcing the principle of reviewing and cross-validation, prohibiting validators from validating their own contributions or those of their respective organizations.
  • Make consensus-based decisions on technical architecture and ensure its coherence.
  • Operate continuously, with responsiveness, in a dedicated public discussion channel
  • Address requests in issues
  • Arbitrates requests for Core Contributors rights and their removal.
  • Maintain onboarding resources and good-first-issue tagging.
  • Recognizing contributors via changelogs, showcases, and optionally core contributor seats.

Becoming a core contributor

Achieving status of Core Contributor requires significant contributions to the project, a demonstrated ability to produce high-quality code or other value to the project, and adherence to the guidelines outlined in the code of conduct, CODING.md and CONTRIBUTING.md documents.

New core contributors can be nominated by any existing core contributor. Their selection is then subject to an absolute majority vote within the Core Contributor group.

This role is granted on an individual basis (not as part of an organization).

The role may be revoked due to rule violations or inactivity (6+ months without contributions). This requires an absolute majority vote from active core contributors, excluding the person concerned. Revocation is automatic after 12 consecutive months without contributions.

Should this person become active again, they will certainly be welcome, but would require a nomination.

Project Steering Committee (PSC)

The project steering committee is the main governing body for the OpenSource project. It oversees its strategic direction. PSC members represent the interests of users and contributors. They all hold commit rights to the main branch of the project. The PSC operates openly with a consensus-based approach.

PSC scope

  • Ensure that all project rules are respected, be it values, governance or technical processes;
  • Arbitrates on significant decisions (e.g., roadmap, release management, governance changes) and resolves disputes.
  • Publishes functional roadmap.
  • Manages releases.
  • Oversees the project's sustainability in terms of maintainability and technical debt.
  • Oversees ongoing developments.
  • Help Core contributors to evaluate and improve proposals.
  • Contributes to functional testing of pre-production versions.
  • Ensures outreach and project management.
  • At any point in time, the PSC can emit a veto for a proposal or a Pull Request. This veto must be motivated and its rationale explained in detail, with references to the project's values and global strategy and purpose.

Meetings

The PSC holds meetings at the request of any PSC member, and every 2 months minimum. Active contributors who are not committee members may be invited to PSC meetings. PSC members are allowed to invite others to meetings based on their expertise or involvement with iTowns. Member’s opinions are documented for transparency and as an objective metric of active participation, and proposed and adopted solutions are specifically reported.

Once a year, a sponsors' meeting will be held to review the year, approve the year's activities, and set guidelines as needed. Participants in this meeting will be designated by the PSC organizations.

Decision-making process

The project operates a policy of lazy consensus, allowing the majority of decisions to be made without resorting to a formal vote. Votes can be required for certain actions though. In the event of a vote, the following rules apply: one vote per organization within the PSC, with the weight of that vote being proportional to the number of its principal contributors.

Joining the PSC

The PSC is composed of legal persons and individuals according to the following two cases: Legal person: represents an organization that have at least one core contributor. A single organization may have up to two representatives on the PSC. Individual: a core contributor not affiliated with a PSC member organization.

Turnover is allowed and expected to accommodate people only able to become active on the project in intervals. A PSC member may step down at any time. The current members of the PSC are listed in the membership document.

Membership in the PSC is determined as follows:

  • A new PSC member can be invited by the current PSC members. The nominated member may be an individual or an organization. In the latter case, a representative will be appointed by the organization.
  • A vote will follow. Only existing PSC committee members may vote on new members. Nominees must receive an absolute majority vote from existing members to be added to the PSC.

A member may be removed from the committee if they haven't had any core contributors for the past 6 months, or upon a proposal submitted to the committee and subject to an absolute majority vote by the other members of the PSC. Removal proposal must be motivated and its rationale explained in detail, with references to the project's values and global strategy and purpose. In the event of a removal vote, each organization has an equal vote, regardless of the number of contributors it represents.

Contribution process

You can either make a contribution or a proposal. Please read the Proposal process before.

Communication channels

Discord channel

website

Contact us at iTowns@ign.fr.