I. Context and principles

  1. GÉANT Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are established under the auspices of GÉANT in order to create an open forum where experts from its community exchange information, knowledge, ideas and best practices about specific technical or other areas of business relevant to the research and education networking community.

  2. Motivations, aims and objectives:

    The main topics covered by the new SIG would include, but would not be limited to:

    1. Supporting open source software projects that have the required level of maturity to join an appropriate software conservancy provided by a third party.
    2. Working with GÉANT to define an MoU for interactions with third party software conservancy organisations, including issues regarding cost for participation in such conservancies.
    3. Supporting open source projects in creating models for project governance and organisation via template documentation.
    4. Encouraging good practice in software development via best practice recommendations for code quality.

3. The SIG will be known as the Greenhouse SIG.

II. Initiation

1. A GÉANT SIG can be initiated by any member of the GÉANT community based on the following conditions and steps:

    1. at least 3 NRENs or other organisations support the creation of the SIG and are willing to actively participate (see Appendix A); 
    2. an initial Steering Committee (SC) of 3-5 individuals nominated by the supporting organisations is established by simple agreement of the requesting NRENs or other organisations (see Appendix A); 
    3. the SC informs GÉANT about the creation of the SIG by submitting the detailed Charter document (see Appendix B); 
    4. if GÉANT agrees, the new SIG has been created.

2. Once the SIG has been created, GÉANT will provide continuous support subject to yearly monitoring (also see IV.).

III. Operations, composition, and roles

  1. A SIG is designed to keep the strengths and interests of the community, to continue sharing and investigating within the spirit of openness and collaboration.

  2. A SIG should act as a catalyst, organising virtual and face-to-face meetings, small workshops, training or BoFs co-located with other related group-meetings or relevant conferences.

  3. Should the SIG produce any kind of results, these shall be made available in the public domain.

  4. Participation in a GÉANT SIG is open to any clearly identified organisations or individuals, provided that the other SIG participants are sufficiently informed about their interest and intentions.

  5. A SIG is collectively led by its SC (3-5 voluntary members) nominated by its participants and appointed by GÉANT for a two-year term of office that is interruptible and/or renewable (see Appendix A).

  6. The SC is responsible for the business of the SIG. The SC takes decisions primarily by consensus or by simple majority within the SC. If a decision cannot be made, GÉANT is responsible for the decision.

  7. The SC is also responsible for producing brief annual reports to GÉANT about the progress of the SIG according to the pre-defined yearly plan and Key Performance Indicators (see Appendix B).

IV. Termination

  1. A SIG has no pre-defined mandate or expiration date, but its support, subject to yearly monitoring by GÉANT, can be terminated if one of the following situations occurs:

    1. the SC has fewer than 3 members for a 3-month period;

    2. the SC collectively requests the termination of the SIG;

    3. the yearly assessment results are unsatisfactory;

    4. any of the SIG participants, subject to detailed investigation by GÉANT, explicitly requests the termination of the SIG;

    5. GÉANT decides to terminate the SIG.

  2. Appeals by any of the SIG participants can be submitted to GÉANT; these shall be resolved within 3 months.

  3. After detailed investigations of the aforementioned situations and potential appeals, the decision of GÉANT about the SIG support is final.

V. Resources and support

  1.  As long as the SIG is supported by GÉANT, GÉANT will provide the following services:

    1. mailing list(s) under the geant.org domain;
    2. maintenance of wiki page(s);
    3. website - on request and as decided to be appropriate by GÉANT;
    4. online survey tool - on request;
    5. social media, news, and annual report coverage.

  2. In the case of termination of GÉANT SIG support, the transition of services a), b), and c) to other providers is ensured by GÉANT.

  3. Official minutes keeping, AV recording or other archiving is subject to discussion with the GÉANT employee assigned to support the SIG.

  4. A SIG has no dedicated budget other than the expenses of GÉANT.

  5. GÉANT may find internal or external funding sources (e.g., projects, commercial sponsors) to cover the expenses of SIG support, as appropriate.

Appendix A – Steering Committee and SIG participation

List of SC members:

Guido Aben, Glenn Wearen, Leif Johansson, (Andrea Bianchi), Rogier Spoor.

List of active SIG participants:

AARNet, Nordunet, Surfnet, GARR, PSNC, Heanet.

Appendix B – 1st Year Plan and KPIs

A project plan is separately maintained for the Greenhouse.


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