Terms of Reference · Archivematica Product Support Program

Date adopted: 21 October 2020

Background and Purpose

The Product Support Program is a membership-based venue for organizations that are actively engaged in extending or customising Archivematica. The PSP helps members reduce the costs of their Archivematica software development and better manage the associated risks. Members will engage with other developer-users, improve their understanding, and help shape discussions around development practices and the technical architecture of the Archivematica project.

This program is not about governance of the Archivematica software project but about ensuring that people who are developing Archivematica are making as much sustainable progress as possible with the least amount of effort.

The program is designed to benefit organisations that are extending or customising Archivematica for local use. Members will describe and coordinate their development plans, with the intention of incorporating their customisations and extensions into general public releases of Archivematica, managed by Artefactual. The program aims to reduce the cost and effort required to contribute code to the Archivematica project, for program members and the entire Archivematica community.

The Product Support Program was initiated by Artefactual in December 2019. The first official meeting was held on January 15, 2020.

Mandate

The mandate of the Product Support Program is to improve and ensure the long term, sustainable usefulness and value of Archivematica to members and the entire global cultural memory community.

The PSP provides two primary mechanisms to fulfill its mandate. The first is a forum to discuss the software development process. Members can describe problems and obstacles they are experiencing, and help identify ways to improve development practices, identify and reduce friction in development coordination, and reduce technical debt, improve test coverage, and increase the visibility of active and planned development work across the entire Archivematica community.

Secondly, the PSP has an advisory role, allowing members to share their plans and ideas for software improvements, and receive feedback from other members and from Artefactual. Crucially, this process will help distinguish between product improvements, and customisations and extensions. Artefactual can then take responsibility for ensuring the core Archivematica product evolves and improves in a way that best meets common needs, and reduces the cost and risk of integration with other software components.

In order to achieve these aims, PSP members will:

Discuss and review the current Archivematica Technical Architecture, including the interfaces and API, proposed innovations, and the long term vision of the project.
Describe their plans and current projects to write code for, or related to, Archivematica.
Document a process for creating and maintaining a roadmap for Archivematica.
Produce a collaborative list of development intentions from Members once every 90 days for the purpose of finding synchronicity between Member initiatives and sharing information.
Publish minutes and other documents to share development intentions and efforts with the Archivematica community.
Discuss pooling of resources toward aligned development activities.
Contribute to Artefactual’s Product Vision for Archivematica and related applications.

Principles

Artefactual and the Members of the Product Support Program agree on the following principles:

That participants want to see Archivematica be successful and sustainable as a long-term digital preservation solution.
That Archivematica is more sustainable and successful if there is a wider community of developers contributing to the codebase.
That Archivematica remain free and open in all senses. The Members of the Product Support Program can guide and suggest changes in the development of Archivematica but participation in the project is still open to all.
That Archivematica is more sustainable if the need to branch the code is minimised and more successful if code quality is maintained.
That organizations who are actively developing code for Archivematica should have a project-wide view of other major development efforts in order to minimize the risk of redundancy.
That the minutes, papers and artefacts of this group will be open to all.

Membership

Eligibility

Membership in the Product Support Program is open to any organization that agrees to conform to the principles of the group. Membership is intended for organizations who are, or who plan to begin, actively developing code for Archivematica Artefactual retain the right to request demonstrable evidence of this intention. The associated cost for membership is $10,000 USD per year.

How to join

The Product Support Program will not be open to new members for the first six months of operations, beginning in January 2020.

After July 1, 2020, organizations who are interested in joining the Product Support Program should email info@artefactual.com. Please include:

Information about your organization, including your past experiences and future intentions for working with and developing code for Archivematica.
A signed copy of the Membership Form.
Invoicing information (contact name and email.)

The current Members and Artefactual will review all applications to ensure that the applying organization will benefit from membership in the Product Support Program.

If you have questions about the Product Support Program, please email them to info@artefactual.com at any time.

Membership fee

The annual membership fee is USD$10,000, payable to Artefactual Systems, Inc. Artefactual will provide an invoice for the membership fee.

Membership period

The annual membership period will run from January 1 to December 31. Membership is managed by Artefactual Systems Inc. and is renewed annually by agreement with Artefactual Systems Inc.

Members who wish to join mid-year will be invoiced a prorated membership fee for the balance of the calendar year.

Renewal invoices will be sent on November 1. Institutions who do not plan to renew are requested to let Artefactual know as soon as possible.

Roles

Artefactual is the organizational home of the Archivematica project. Artefactual will continue to decide what code is committed to the official Archivematica source-code repositories.

As conveners of the Product Support Program, Artefactual agrees to:

Organize and host regular online meetings.
Prepare meeting agendas and take minutes.
Facilitate communication channels (email list, instant messaging, etc.)
Take guidance from the Members and incorporate this guidance into the Archivematica roadmap (this includes both the form of the roadmap and the contents of the roadmap.)
Report Archivematica development initiatives taking place at Artefactual to the Members.
Provide centralized support for PSP initiatives (e.g. modes and methods of sharing, collaborative workspaces) as needed and able.
Provide high-level technical feedback on Member development initiatives.

Members of the Product Support Program agree to:

Attend quarterly meetings and contribute agenda items.
Provide feedback to Artefactual on development methods, priorities, and processes.
Share development ideas, work, and processes with each other.
Participate in collaborative decision-making around high-level policy and process decisions.

Procedures

Review

These Terms of Reference will be updated on an annual basis during the first meeting of the calendar year.

Meetings

Schedule

Meetings will be held quarterly in January, April, July, and October. The January, April, and July meetings will be held via teleconference, hosted by Artefactual.

The October meeting will be an extended in-person meeting, hosted by one of the Members or by Artefactual. The location will be decided by consensus.

“Off-schedule” meetings may be organized as needed. These off-schedule meetings could be continuations of the quarterly meeting, or they could serve other purposes, such as informational webinars on new initiatives by group members. Off-schedule meetings will be recorded for Members to watch later, if requested.

Meeting reminders will be sent to the mailing list one week before the meeting.

Attendance

There is no limit on the number of people who can attend each meeting per member organization. It is strongly encouraged that cross-disciplinary teams attend, including technical staff (developers and systems administrators) who work with Archivematica.

While regular attendance of meetings ensures the success of the program, it is understood that occasionally members may need to send their regrets. Please send regrets by responding to the meeting reminder sent to the mailing list.

While it is to everyone's benefit if members can send at least one delegate to every meeting, it is understandable if regrets need to be sent if no one is available.

Details

Meetings will be organized by Artefactual and Artefactual will act as the secretariat for the program.
Artefactual will put out a call for agenda items one month before the meeting. All Members are welcome to contribute agenda items.
Artefactual will prepare the agenda and send it out one week before the meeting.
Online meetings will be held via Zoom or another teleconferencing system hosted by Artefactual.
Artefactual will take minutes and send the minutes out for review after the meeting.
Reviewed minutes will be posted in the Archivematica PSP GitHub repository.

Communications

Artefactual will host a mailing list for Members via Freelists. Any individual from a Member Organization can be added to the mailing list. The mailing list is available online at https://www.freelists.org/list/archivematica-psp.

If other communication platforms are required, they will be decided by consensus of the Members and Artefactual as needed.

Code of conduct

The Code of Conduct is located in the PSP GitHub repository at https://github.com/archivematica/psp/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

The Product Support Program is governed by the same Code of Conduct as the Archivematica Issues repository, the main venue where code contributors convene to discuss code changes. This Code of Conduct that has been adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 1.4, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct.html.