Package maintainers working group

draft/package-maintainers.md

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+# Package Maintainers Working Group
+
+🚧 Draft charter: this working group isn’t currently approved. The proposal requires further work, and an initial membership team.
+
+## Scope of responsibilities
+
+This group supports package maintainers in the Django ecosystem.
+Packages are an important part of the experience of using Django, and their maintainers can benefit from different forms of support than Django contributors and users.
+
+The goals of the group are:
+
+- To facilitate discussions and share knowledge about common issues or tasks in package maintenance.
+- To coordinate efforts to improve the health and quality of packages in the Django ecosystem.
+- To advocate for the needs of package maintainers in the Django community.
+
+This is a broad definition of the group’s remit.
+Current members select specific activities to undertake based on their interests and availability.
+See [Group activities](#group-activities) for examples of what the group may choose to do.
+
+### Delegated responsibilities
+
+With regards to Django Software Foundation responsibilities and resources, the group operates with:
+
+- No special powers delegated by the board to the group.
+- No specific "Django Software Foundation" actions the group can take directly.
+
+Any request for funding or resources are made via existing processes outside of this group.
+This can be revised in the future as and when the group identifies specific recurring needs.
+
+## Membership
+
+- Chair: You?
+- Co-Chair: You?
+- Board Liaison (must be an active Board member; may be the same as Chair/Co-Chair): You?
+- Other members:
+  - You?
+
+The Chair, Co-Chair and Board Liaison manage the membership of the group. The Chair and Co-Chair animate the group’s activities. The Board Liaison relays information between the group and the Django Software Foundation Board.
+
+### Eligibility
+
+Membership is open to all Individual Members of the Django Software Foundation.
+
+### How to join
+
+To join, members must apply via the group’s [membership application form](https://www.example.com/) (to be set up once the group is up and running), sharing their motivation for joining, and expected contributions.
+
+Membership applications are reviewed asynchronously and during meetings, after which they will be voted in by current group members (50%+1). Members will be selected for the group based on their interest in the group’s goals and ability to contribute to them.
+
+### Membership terms
+
+Members join the group for a 12-month term. At the end of this term, they need to opt into staying involved to keep being a member of the group.
+
+If any member wishes to leave the group before the end of their term, they can do so without a vote.
+
+Members can propose a vote on removing a member from the working group. This needs 50%+1 agreement.
+
+## Budget
+
+No allocated budget, the group makes ad-hoc requests for funding or resources as needed.
+
+## Group communications
+
+The group communicates asynchronously via:
+
+- The public `#packages` channel on the Django Discord server.
+- Appropriate public sections of the [Django Forum](https://forum.djangoproject.com/).
+- GitHub issues and pull requests in a new `django/package-maintainers-wg` repository.
+- Collaborative documents set up in the Django Software Foundation’s Google Workspace.
+- A new private #package-maintainers-wg` channel on the Django Discord server for internal discussions.
+
+The group will also offer office hours for package maintainers every month via a video call.
+
+## Reporting
+
+The group will share highlights from current activities on a monthly basis via a forum post.
+
+## Appendix
+
+### Group activities
+
+As an illustration of the group’s remit, here are possible activities members could take part in.
+
+#### Support Django version compatibility efforts
+
+As Django regularly releases new versions, it’s an ongoing effort to ensure packages are compatible with new releases.
+
+Group members can support maintainers in this effort by:
+
+- Creating a shared calendar with Django release dates and deadlines.
+- Creating communication channels for package maintainers to coordinate compatibility changes for a specific release.
+- Recommending appropriate automation, such as [django-upgrade](https://github.com/adamchainz/django-upgrade) or how to set up Django pre-releases in Continuous Integration.
+- Proposing additions to the Django release notes with recommendations on how to handle deprecations.
+
+#### Share packaging best practices
+
+The group can work on create, maintain, or curate best practices for Django package maintainers. For example, the official [Advanced tutorial: How to write reusable apps](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.0/intro/reusable-apps/), or packaging-focused sections on third-party resources like [awesome-django](https://github.com/wsvincent/awesome-django).
+
+Those best practices can cover aspects like:
+
+- Documentation approaches and tools
+- Use of the `django_` prefix for app names (see [Change reusable apps naming recommendation](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/change-reusable-apps-naming-recommendation/25233)).
+- Recommended Python, Django, browser, operating system support policies to align with those of Django itself.
+- Tooling, for example how to set up Continuous Integration for Django packages.
+
+#### Facilitate community-driven maintenance
+
+Group members can liaise with organizations dedicated to sharing maintenance efforts, such as [Jazzband](https://jazzband.co/), [Wagtail Nest](https://github.com/wagtail-nest), or [Django Commons](https://github.com/django-commons). Or work directly with packages in need of new maintainers to find new candidates. This can involve:
+
+- Sharing calls for new package maintainers.
+- Coordinating trusted volunteer open source “roadies” familiar with package ownership transfers.
+- Facilitating participation in mentoring programs such as [Google Summer of Code](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) or [Djangonaut Space](https://djangonaut.space/).
+- Providing support for tasks requiring very specific expertise, like funding avenues or vulnerability reports handling.
+- Encouraging working on packages during contributor sprints.
+
+### Curate training for maintainers
+
+The group could help organize (and fund) training sessions or training material for package maintainers on relevant topics. For example anything relating to sustainability of long-term development, or product / project management (deprecation policies, user research, writing roadmaps, fundraising).
+
+### Advance the state of the art
+
+The group could also work on more ambitious projects to advance the state of the art in Django and Python package maintenance. For example:
+
+- A standard to call for contributors, maintainers, or request funding via pip or a manage.py check
+- Distributed code review for Django packages (see for example [crev](https://github.com/crev-dev/crev/))
+- Participation in convenings such as [PackagingCon](https://packaging-con.org/), [Upstream](https://upstream.live/), etc.