In 2018, Justin McLean led an effort to draft a set of project bylaws that a) apply to projects that don't have bylaws and b) serve as a convenient starting point for projects that are drafting their own bylaws. This effort ultimately resulted in the Default Project Guidelines [1] document located on the Incubator wiki. One change that didn't trigger any discussion at the time [2] was the decision to use the word "guideline" instead of "bylaw." This strikes me as odd since there is a major substantive difference between the meaning of these two words.
Here's how the two words are defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: - Bylaw: "a rule that GOVERNS the members of an organization." [3] [emphasis added] - Guideline: "information intended to advise people on how something SHOULD BE done or what something SHOULD BE." [4] [emphasis added] Wikipedia, while not an authoritative source, provides useful context on how these terms are used in practice: - "A bylaw ... is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authority." [5] - "A guideline is similar to a rule, but are legally less binding as justified deviations are possible." [6] I am neither a lawyer nor a lexicographer, but it seems clear that a guideline carries no more weight than an officially approved suggestion, while a bylaw is a binding rule. While it's up to each PMC to decide whether they want to adopt a set of non-binding suggestions that SHOULD BE [7] followed or a set of binding laws that MUST BE followed, I think it's important for the IPMC to clarify that the former are called guidelines, the latter are called bylaws, and that PMCs need to be aware of the difference. Thanks. - Carl [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Default+Project+Guidelines [2] https://lists.apache.org/thread/h15qjp35ghg446xr5bnmmlg06p3hdoj9 [3] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bylaw [4] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/guideline [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=By-law&oldid=1215430864 [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guideline&oldid=1185185478 [7] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119
