PypeIt Governance Structure

PypeIt follows a structured do-ocracy governance model, where valuable and sustained contributions to the project lead to more influence over its development direction.

Note

We are currently in a transition to a new governance model that evolves the current structure into one that is intended to be more community focused, but remains primarily a do-ocracy. We expect the new governance model will be instituted by the end of 2025. The following is a working draft of this governance structure.

Date	Status	Authors	Comments
2025-07-29	DRAFT	Westfall	First draft

Project Committees and Team Roles 

The PypeIt governance model establishes the following committees and team roles, as defined by this section. The process of appointing each role is discussed below.

Coordination Committee: Provides overall project management and coordinates development efforts by setting goals and milestones that incorporate community input.
Advisory Council: A self-governing body that, in part, provides outward-focused reviews of PypeIt’s impact and success, as needed to ensure PypeIt is able to meet the needs of the larger astronomy community. See their full charter here.
PypeIt Maintainers: Individuals with write access to the main repository that supervise and contribute to code development.
PypeIt Voting Members: Individuals that vote on project-related decisions on behalf of the community, keeping in mind the best interests of both the broader community and the PypeIt project.
Other Roles

PypeIt Coordination Committee 

The PypeIt Coordination Committee (PCC) is the primary managing body of the PypeIt project. Its responsibilities include:

Maintaining the health of the project, as assessed by the continued use of the code and timely attention to issues and pull requests.
Recruitment for and management of the PypeIt Team
Establishing high-level development milestones
Advertising opportunities for and coordinating project-related funding proposals and requests

The PCC has four members:

Project Scientist (PS): The chair of the PCC, who guides the overall scientific direction of the project, elected for a term of three years.
Developer Representative (DR): Presents and advocates for priorities of the developer community, elected for a term of two years.
End-User Representative (UR): Presents and advocates for priorities of the end-user community, elected for a term of two years.
Advisory Council Representative (AR): Presents and advocates for priorities of the broader astronomical community, both those that do and do not currently use PypeIt. The Advisory Council Representative follows an independent selection process, as outlined by the PypeIt Advisory Council (PAC) Charter. While on the PCC, the PAC Representative is considered a Voting Member; however, they lose that designation once they vacate their spot on the PCC.

The PCC meets at least quarterly. Decisions are made via consensus following discussions that are recorded in openly accessible meeting notes. If consensus cannot be reached or when the PCC thinks it is otherwise appropriate or necessary, decisions will be brought to a vote by the Voting Members.

Nominations for PCC positions are held yearly, depending on the positions that are reaching the end of their term. Nominations can only come from Voting Members, and Voting Members can self-nominate. The current PCC will vet the nominees and contact each nominee to ensure they accept the nomination. See further information here. The procedure for removal of PCC members is discussed here.

Developer and End-User Representatives

Ultimately, the success of PypeIt will rely on developers who are willing and able to improve and maintain the code and end-users that can successfully use it to extract data for direct scientific analysis from raw observations. PypeIt encourages significant overlap between these two groups; i.e., we encourage end-users to develop the code and developers to use PypeIt for science projects. The purpose of having Developer and End-User Representatives on the PC, however, is to ensure that the needs specific to each group are well represented within the project leadership.

Each Representative is expected to:

Facilitate the collection of information from developers/end-users regarding issues with PypeIt, ranging from minor bugs to significant feature deficiencies
As members of the PCC, present and advocate for development effort needed to address those needs

In addition, the DR will encourage development toward the milestones developed by the PCC, and the UR will encourage community-driven efforts to test and collect feedback on specific new/improved functionality that stems from each milestone.

PypeIt Advisory Council (PAC)

PypeIt must continue to be a valuable resource for the astronomical community. The PypeIt Advisory Council is a largely self-governed body whose primary task is to ensure that the PypeIt Team is aware of the needs of the community and to provide independent feedback on PypeIt’s impact. The PAC charter is kept here, separate from this governance document.

Maintainers 

PypeIt Maintainers are a subset of developers that will have direct write access to the PypeIt repository. Maintainers are expected to:

Provide user support, parsing feedback into GitHub Issues, as necessary
Develop new features, perform code refactors, and address issues raised
Improve test coverage
Ensure the documentation is up-to-date
Review pull requests, and potentially execute the suite of tests needed for pull-request reviews

Pull requests must be approved by at least one maintainer; however, these maintainers may delegate the review to other community members without write privileges. In that case, the approval message from the maintainer (the requirement for the merge to continue) must indicate that they are basing their approval on the designated review.

Although maintainers are not designated as experts in specific parts of the code, the PCC should make every effort to ensure that the group of maintainers, as a whole, provides expertise spanning the full code base.

Maintainers are appointed by consensus of the PCC, or by vote if the PCC does not come to consensus. Maintainers are not appointed for a fixed term. However, as a maintainer’s priorities change, they may be asked (by the PCC or by vote) to relinquish their write access if they are unable or unwilling to continue fulfilling the duties of the role. Maintainers can voluntarily relinquish their write privileges at anytime. The procedure for removal of a Maintainer is discussed here.

Voting Members 

Voting Members are members of the PypeIt community that have demonstrated their commitment to the success of the project via significant contributions. We acknowledge contributions take many forms, including but not limited to participating in discussions in our Users Slack Workspace; reporting issues to our GitHub repository; submitting pull requests with small bug fixes, documentation or testing improvements, or large feature improvements; and participating in project maintenance and governance. The PypeIt team should maintain no fewer than 10 Voting Members.

Nominations for voting members can be sent to the PCC at any time for consideration. The PCC will vet the nominees and contact the nominee to ensure they accept the nomination. Self-nominations are acceptable. Assuming both the PCC and the nominee accept the nomination, voting member nominations will be considered alongside PCC elections once per year. Voting members are not elected to a fixed term. The procedure for removal of a Voting Members is discussed here.

Other Named Roles 

Ombudsperson: The Ombudsperson provides a confidential point of contact for code-of-conduct violations or related concerns. They also may help mediate disputes within the PypeIt team, as appropriate. The Ombudsperson is nominated and appointed without a fixed term following the same procedure as for the PCC members. The Ombudsperson cannot be a member of the PCC.

Voting Procedures 

For any vote to be valid, at least two thirds of the Voting Members must participate. Members that do not participate in any given vote are assumed to have abstained from voting and will not be included in the vote tally.

Unless an off-cycle election is necessary, elections for PCC and Voting Members are held yearly. Voting Members are expected to vote in at least one of every two yearly elections. Voting members that have not participated in consecutive elections will be asked to assume emeritus status, losing their active voting privileges. Participation in additional bespoke votes/elections do not count for or against this tally.

Once a vote is called, votes are received over a two week period by anonymous ballot. Votes are tallied and reported by the PCC or the Ombudsperson. Once reported, the results of the vote take immediate effect, except for changes to PCC membership (see below).

Elections and Appointment Procedures 

Nominees for any named position are successfully elected if (1) they receive the most votes when multiple nominees are under consideration or (2) they receive a simple majority of votes when they are the sole nominee.

Appointments of any elected nominee take immediate effect, except for PCC positions. For PCC positions, there must be a transition period of at least one month.

None of PypeIt’s named positions are term limited; however, PCC members have fixed terms where they must be re-elected to their positions. The terms of each PCC position is listed below.

Position	Term
Project Scientist (PS)	3 yr
Developer Representative (DR)	2 yr
End-User Representative (UR)	2 yr
Advisory Council Representative (AR)	…

To maintain continuity, elections of the DR and UR are staggered. The term of the AR is set by the PAC but should be staggered with the PS.

If a member of the PCC is removed, their replacement will complete the original term and must be re-elected to the position following the regular election cycle.

Removal and Modification Procedures 

Removal of individuals from named positions (except for Maintainers) must follow a motion from a Voting Member that is seconded. If the vote does not involve a member of the PCC, the PCC will officiate the vote, as usual; otherwise, the Ombudsperson will officiate. Similarly, to modify this governance charter, the modification must be proposed and seconded by Voting Members.

Removal of an individual from a position or modification of this charter requires (1) at least two thirds of the Voting Members participate (as always) and (2) at least three quarters of the tallied votes be in favor of the motion.

For Maintainers, removal can be proposed by a single PCC member. All PCC members must participate in the vote. If the vote is split, the motion is taken to the full list of Voting Members.

Institution 

Instituting this new governance model will proceed as follows:

The Ombudsperson through this process will be John O’Meara.
The current PypeIt leadership team (Prochaska, Hennawi, Westfall, and Holden) will nominate potential Voting Members, Maintainers, and PCC members (except for the PAC Representative). The current PypeIt leadership team members and the Ombudsperson will be de facto Voting Members.
Voting Member nominees will be approached and either agree or disagree to accept the nomination. Those that agree will be instituted as Voting Members immediately.
Led by the current PypeIt leadership team, all Voting Members will iterate on and ultimately vote to ratify this governance model.
Voting members will be able to make additional nominations for the first PCC, following the accepted procedure. All PCC nominees will be approached, and if they accept the nomination, they will be part of the first election.
Once all the nominations are finalized, the first election will be held to fill the Project Scientist, Developer Representative, and End-User Representative positions on the PCC.
The newly elected PCC will work with NOIRLab to setup the first PypeIt Advisory Council and iterate on the PypeIt Advisory Council (PAC) Charter.
The newly formed PAC will nominate their first representative for the PCC, and both the PAC Charter and the first PAC Representative will be voted on by all Voting Members.
The now fully formed PCC will finalize the list of Maintainers, following the accepted procedure.