Rules for openHAB maintainers

[kaikreuzer]

The @openhab/maintainers team comprises all sub-teams of maintainers of the different openHAB repositories. While every maintainer team of a component can define their own individual rules, there are a few rules that must be followed across the whole organisation:

• Discussions about the rules and decisions should are done publicly, preferably on the Github team discussion page.
• We do not merge our own prs unless approved by another maintainer (sole exception: There is only a single maintainer for the repo, but this is a situation that should be avoided)
• We use the "squash+merge" Github feature as a default, never the "create merge commit" option. The "rebase+merge" can be used in rare cases, where the PR consists out of multiple distinct commits, which should be kept separately in the history.
• When merging something which consists of multiple commits you should always modify the commit message so that it does not consist of multiple sign-offs etc.
• The PR builds (if available) should successfully pass before merging. It can be merged without this, but it should be commented why the PR build issue was ignored.
• For small typo fixes and single line documentation/comment updates, we can apply the "small patch exception", i.e. we do not require the contributor to sign off his commit. In all other cases, a sign-off is mandatory.
• When merging, we are setting the according milestone on the PR.
• When merging, we decide whether the PR should appear in the release notes. If so, either the "bug" or "enhancement" label must be set and the title must be descriptive and written in imperative mood.