Software Steering Council

Software Steering Council#

The current members of the Software Steering Council are listed in the Leadership Directory.

Purpose#

The Jupyter Software Steering Council (SSC) has jurisdiction over software-related decisions across Project Jupyter, with a primary focus on coordination across projects and decisions that have impact across many Jupyter Subprojects. It is also a mechanism for representatives of each project to share information and expertise. Technical decisions and processes where the SSC isn’t explicitly involved are automatically delegated to the individual projects to manage their day-to-day activities, create new repositories in their orgs, etc., with independence and autonomy.

Responsibilities#

Sole responsibilities#

The SSC is responsible for the following:

Defining the submission, review, and approval process for Jupyter Enhancement Proposals.
Stewarding the JEP process to ensure that it is inclusive and participatory, and solicits feedback from the right stakeholders. As a starting point, the NumFOCUS DISCOVER Cookbook may offer some useful starting pointers.
Making decisions on JEPs after receiving community feedback (JEPs are the mechanism for elevating any software decision/idea up to the broader Project, while individual Subprojects can make decisions within their scope via their regular mechanisms).
Owning, managing and implementing the Jupyter Incubation process (jupyter-incubator).
Owning, managing and implementing the Jupyter Attic process (https://github.com/orgs/jupyter/repositories?type=source&q=archived%3Atrue).
Stewarding discussions and activities beyond JEPs that involve cross-cutting concerns, standards, protocols and other architectural issues that impact the entire project.
Owning and managing anything related to security vulnerabilities across the project, including the Jupyter security lists, any private security repositories, etc.
Voting to accept Working Groups nominated by the Executive Council (EC) to have a representative on the SSC.

Shared responsibilities with the Executive Council#

The EC and SSC share responsibility for approving:

Changes to the Jupyter Governance model.
Creation of new Jupyter Subprojects.
Removal of Subprojects from Jupyter.

In these decisions, each body will vote independently and the change will be approved only if both bodies approve.

Membership#

SSC members are representatives from Jupyter Subprojects that wish to assist the community in sharing information across projects and participate in decision-making that affects many stakeholders in the Jupyter ecosystem. Any Subproject council member is eligible to represent the Subproject on the SSC. While not ideal, one person may serve as the SSC representative for more than one Subproject. In this case, a representative may cast one vote for each Subproject they represent in SSC decisions.

A person may not serve simultaneously on the SSC and the EC.

The SSC may vote to remove an SSC member. A removal motion passes if two-thirds of the entire SSC votes in favor of removal. All SSC members are expected to vote without recusal, including the member in question.

Member composition#

The Software Steering Council is composed of one representative from each of the Jupyter Subprojects. In addition, the SSC will contain members from certain Working Groups and Standing Committees whose scope has important impact on SSC activities, such as Diversity and Inclusion, and Internationalization.

Term length#

There is no term length for SSC membership, as each Jupyter Subproject is in charge of selecting its own representative. Projects are encouraged to define their own expectations around SSC membership tenure, to share SSC membership responsibilities among core team members, and to provide mechanisms for healthy rotation that avoid burnout.

Selecting SSC members#

Each Jupyter Subproject, Working Group, or Standing Committee with SSC representation is responsible to nominate a single representative using the Jupyter Decision-Making Guidelines.

Bootstrapping the SSC#

The initial Software Steering Council will be created with individuals nominated by each of the major Jupyter Subprojects, as defined by our official list.