Policies - Introduction

Welcome to AspirePress’ policies documentation. This documentation outlines the governance process for AspirePress and the detailed instructions for operating AspirePress as a public benefit corporation.

This documentation is official and ratified documentation must be followed by members of the AspirePress organization. All members are subject to the governance documentation listed in this section, and failure to follow these policies may have consequences.

Who is a member of AspirePress?

Any person who has access to the AspirePress GitHub or direct communications channels is a member of AspirePress. General members of the community, who are not part of the communication channels are not deemed members for the purposes of this documentation. However, AspirePress may refuse membership to any person who violates these policies, regardless of whether they are a member at the time of the violation or not; membership is at the discretion of AspirePress according to the governance laid out here.

Executive Board

AspirePress will have an Executive Board who is responsible for governing the project, and together they select and appoint an Executive Director who is the manager of AspirePress. The Executive Board shall consist of no less than three persons, and no more than seven, and the members of the Executive Board shall be elected for two year terms, with no more than 1/3rd of the entire board up for election at any time. Members are nominated by the Executive Director and/or the Executive Board and put to a vote of the membership.

The Executive Board has certain powers that are enumerated through this documentation.

How policies are written

The following governs how a policy is written and published as a policy in AspirePress:

1. Any member of AspirePress may recommend a policy. This is done by creating a personal fork of the governance documentation and submitting a pull request with the documentation outlined that the member wishes to add.
2. Upon receiving the recommended policy, all members of AspirePress shall have no less than thirty days to review and make comments on the proposed change. If the change is an emergency change this time period may be limited to 5 days.
3. The Executive Board of AspirePress will meet to discuss the policy. They may take action on the policy in one of four ways: they may reject the policy, they may approve the policy, they may request changes to the policy, and they may request a vote of the entire membership on the policy. This vote may be binding or non-binding at teh discretion of the Executive Committee.
4. Upon acceptance of a policy, the policy is merged into main as Ratified and becomes official policy of AspirePress.

Changes to policies adhere to this same process. The only person who may merge a policy into AspirePress is the Executive Director of the AspirePress project, and they may only do so with Board approval.

Note that this is a general process. There may be specific processes outlined in other areas that take precedence over the outlined process here.

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