Governance¶

Project Scope¶

abovepy is a Kentucky-specific geospatial workbench for accessing and analyzing LiDAR, DEM, and orthoimagery data from the KyFromAbove program. It is not a generic STAC client framework.

What Gets Accepted¶

Contributions that align with the following are welcome:

• Workflows for accessing and processing KyFromAbove data products
• Improvements to Kentucky GIS analysis capabilities
• Better support for KyFromAbove STAC collections and metadata
• Performance, reliability, or usability enhancements to existing features
• Documentation, tutorials, and examples using Kentucky data
• Bug fixes and test coverage improvements

What Gets Rejected¶

The following types of changes fall outside project scope:

• General-purpose STAC client features unrelated to KyFromAbove
• Support for non-Kentucky data sources or catalogs
• Surveillance, tracking, or monitoring capabilities targeting individuals
• Features requiring authentication or private data access
• Changes that compromise the library's simplicity or public-data-only model

Maintainers will close out-of-scope proposals with an explanation. If you are unsure whether an idea fits, open a discussion issue before investing time in implementation.

Decision-Making¶

• Routine contributions (bug fixes, docs, small features) are decided by maintainer review on the pull request
• Significant API changes, new modules, or architectural decisions are discussed in a GitHub Issue before implementation
• Governance, security policy, and responsible-use changes are maintainer-only decisions

Maintainer Authority¶

Maintainers have final authority over:

• Accepting or rejecting contributions
• Release timing and versioning
• Enforcing the Code of Conduct
• Modifying governance and policy documents

See MAINTAINERS.md for the current maintainer roster.