# Governance

## Mission

As a vital component of vLLM, the vLLM Ascend project is dedicated to providing an easy, fast, and cheap LLM Serving for everyone on Ascend NPUs and to actively contributing to the enrichment of vLLM.

## Principles

vLLM Ascend follows the vLLM community's code of conduct: [vLLM - CODE OF CONDUCT](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)

## Governance - Mechanics

vLLM Ascend is an open-source project under the vLLM community, where the authority to appoint roles is ultimately determined by the vLLM community. It adopts a hierarchical technical governance structure.

- Contributor:

    **Responsibility:** Help new contributors on boarding, handle and respond to community questions, review RFCs and code.

    **Requirements:** Complete at least 1 contribution. A contributor is someone who consistently and actively participates in a project, including but not limited to issue/review/commits/community involvement.

    The contributor permissions are granted by the [vllm-project/vllm-ascend](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm-ascend)'s repo `Triage` on GitHub, including repo read and clone, issue and PR management, facilitating efficient collaboration between community developers.

- Maintainer:

    **Responsibility:** Develop the project's vision and mission. Maintainers are responsible for shaping the technical direction of the project and ensuring its long-term success. With code merge permissions, they lead roadmap planning, review community contributions, make ongoing code improvements, and actively participate in community engagement—such as regular meetings and events.

    **Requirements:** Deep understanding of ‌vLLM‌ and ‌vLLM Ascend‌ code bases, with a commitment to sustained code contributions and competency in ‌design, development, and PR review workflows‌.

    - **Review quality‌:** Actively participate in community code reviews, ensuring high-quality code integration.
    - **Quality contribution‌:** Successfully develop and deliver at least one major feature while maintaining consistent high-quality contributions.
    - **Community involvement‌:** Actively address issues, respond to forum inquiries, participate in discussions, and engage in community-driven tasks.

The approval from existing Maintainers is required. The vLLM community has the final decision-making authority.
Maintainers will be granted write access to the [vllm-project/vllm-ascend](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm-ascend) GitHub repo. This includes permission to read, clone, and push to the repository, as well as manage issues and pull requests.

## Nominating and Removing Maintainers

### The Principles

- Membership in vLLM Ascend is given to individuals on merit basis after they demonstrate their strong expertise in vLLM/vLLM Ascend through contributions, reviews, and discussions.

- For membership in the maintainer group, individuals have to demonstrate strong and continued alignment with the overall vLLM/vLLM Ascend principles.

- Maintainers who have been inactive for a long time may be transitioned to **emeritus** status under lenient criteria.

- The membership is for an individual, not a company.

### Nomination and Removal

- Nomination: Anyone can nominate a candidate to become a maintainer, including self-nominations. All existing maintainers are responsible for reviewing and evaluating each nomination. The nominator should provide relevant information about the nominee's qualifications—such as review quality, quality contribution, and community involvement—among other strengths.
- Removal: Anyone may nominate an individual for removal from the maintainer role, including self-nominations. All current maintainers are responsible for reviewing and evaluating such nominations. The nominator should provide relevant information about the nominee—such as prolonged inactivity, misalignment with the project's overall direction, or other factors that may render them unsuitable for the maintainer position.
