Create initial README.md

Describe the proposed project manifest.

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+
+# Manifest of the Minetest-Mods team and Mod content.
+
+This document describes the organization and requirements of the Minetest-Mods team, it's goal
+and regulations.
+
+## Goal of this project
+
+This project exists to provide a method for minetest players and server operators
+to have a semi-trusted source of Minetest Mods. As Minetest mods are disctributed
+separately and no single source of mods exists, there are hundreds of Minetest Mods
+around in equal amount of locations on the internet.
+
+By providing a single hosting namespace for Minetest mods, this project serves as a
+method of telling users that a specific version of a Minetest mod is the preferred
+or recommended version of that mod. This helps to alleviate the issues of having many
+forks of Minetest mods around.
+
+Authors of Minetest Mods that host their mods in the minetest-mods project explicitly
+allow the minetest-mods admins to merge changes into their mods. This allows the authors
+of these mods to "sign out" for a while knowing that their mods are being taken care of,
+and provides a method for users to continue using the exact same mods long after the
+original author has moved on since these mods will still be maintained.
+
+## Contents of the project
+
+This project hosts any minetest mod that mod authors have contributed to the Minetest Mods
+project, permitted these mods are properly licensed as an Open Source project, and do
+not present any other legal issues.
+
+* Mods must be licensed under an OSI approved license
+* Mods do not need to be minetest-licensing compatible (meaning, GPL3.0+ is fine)
+* Non-OSI licenses may be acceptable
+* Pure Public Domain is not acceptable, however WTFPL, MIT or CC0 may be acceptable
+
+The project admins reserve the right to discontinue, remove or refuse any project based
+on legality, content or other, at their discretion.
+
+Modpacks (groups of mods bundled together) are not permitted in minetest-mods, as they
+make management more difficult and prevent users from installing only parts of of a
+modpack. For cooperative maintenance of modpacks, see the minetest-modpacks team instead,
+or look at the minetest-games project. (At the time of writing of this document, those
+two teams/projects do not exist).
+
+## Member organization
+
+The project's team members are organized into specific roles:
+
+### 1. project administrator (admin)
+
+Project administrators have full access to all minetest-mods projects, and can create
+new ones, merge PR's in any project, push code to any project, remove any project from
+the minetest-mods project, maintain memberships and permissions.
+
+* admin shall verify mod eligibility and add mod if they meet requirements.
+* admin shall not push code directly to any mod where they are not also the author.
+* admin shall allow author to maintain their contributed mod as they see fit. Moreover,
+admin shall not merge PRs in mods until a reasonable time has elapsed, and author has
+been given a reasonable time to review or object to a PR.
+
+### 2. project author (author)
+
+* author grants admin permission to review, reject or accept outstanding PR's that have gone
+unreasonably long without merging.
+* author grants admin permission to remove his mod from the project.
+* author may grant permission to individual committers to co-maintain his project, including
+merging PR's.
+* author may manage committers as he sees fit.
+* author reasonably works with admin to assure his mod works together with other mods in the
+project, such that it can coexist and interoperate properly with them, avoid breaking other
+mods.
+
+### 3. individual contributor (committer)
+
+* committer may manage PR's, push code to mod that they have been granted access to.
+* committer shall due their due dilligence cooperating with other committer, author and
+admin in maintaining the mod as a team.
+
+## Namespace Organization
+
+Many different versions of mods exists, and many mods have similar names but sometimes
+provide very different functionality. For the purpose of clarity, comflicting names are
+to be prevented, and mods in the minetest-mods project should have clear and unambiguous
+names.
+
+Namespace organization may require admin and author to cooperate to establish proper
+API's and propagate their use through other mods. Authors reasonably should join this
+discussion and cooperate, to avoid mod conflicts and improve mod harmony.
+
+## A note on legacy
+
+Mod author and admin should do their best to avoid supporting a legacy of old world
+data, as this generally does not provide the best atmosphere to develop new mods and
+mod features going forward. At times it may be best to remove support for old minetest
+game versions, old APIs or game object types. We encourage people to provide fallback
+code for old code, but would prefer if people code with a healthy attitude of cleaning
+out old code instead.
+
+As such, we recommend that people actively remove code that exists solely for the
+purpose of old world data, old game versions or old supporting mods. For the purpose
+of this document, "old" means "more than 1 year old, or 365 days". While admins do not
+want to police or enforce this rule, they retain the privilege to remove code that
+violates this rule at their discretion.