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 Tock Working Groups
 ===================
 
-Working groups (wg) are focused groups to organize development around a
+Working groups are focused groups to organize development around a
 particular aspect of Tock.
 
+## Motivation
+
+Tock relies on contributions from developers with across a variety of
+organizations, physical distance, timezones, and engagement. It has
+also grown large in scope. This has resulted in strain on maintainers
+to regularly keep up with contributions while ensuring quality and
+important global policies like safety and security. It has also
+resulted in contributors' work going unaddressed for long periods of
+time.
+
+Tock encompases a large and varied set of subsystems, architectures,
+focus areas, libraries, ancillary tools, and documentation. Most
+contributors have expertise and stake in a subset of these. Moreover,
+it is impractical for any maintainer to keep up with the discussions
+and direction of each part of the project. Finally, different parts of
+the project should be able to move at different paces, with different
+levels of scrutiny. For example, a soundness bug or performance
+regression in the kernel crate can catestrophically impact all users
+and should be avoided if at all possible, while a sub-optimal design
+decision in an experimental user-space library is not a big deal.
+
+To facilitate this, working groups take on responsibility for specific
+sub-areas of the project. Members of a working group become experts in
+that sub-area and are best able to determine appropriate scrutiny for
+accepting contributions, frequency and mode of design discussions,
+etc.
+
+## Structure And Responsibilities
+
+Tock development organizes around a core working group as well as
+additional area-specific working groups. The core working group
+oversees the project wholistically, defining high-level design goals
+and project direction, establishing working groups, and facilitating
+work that spans multiple working groups. Other working groups
+facilitate contributions to specific sub-areas of the project, with
+devolved decision making resposibility for accepting contributions,
+design, and direction.
+
+While working groups *oversee* development, working group members are
+not expected to be the primary source of contributions. Instead,
+working groups establish code review standards, define and communicate
+specific design direction for their purview, and ensure relevant
+contributors are both supported and effective.
+
+### Working Group Organizational Guidelines
+
+Each working group has a Lead who assembles the working group
+membership and is responsible for its operation.
+
+Each working group should include at least one member from the Core
+Working Group to ensure that the Core Working Group is regularly
+updated on the activities and motivations of the working group. The
+Core Working Group member need not be the working group Lead.
+
+Each working group, including the Core Working Group, establishes its
+own rules and procedures for accepting contributions, communicating,
+meeting, and making decisions. In absense of such rules, working
+groups make decisions by consensus, have weekly voice calls, make
+meeting notes available publicly, and communicate asynchronously via a
+mailing list.
+
+However, working groups are encouraged to avoid consensus-based
+decision making as quickly as possible and establish appropriate
+meeting frequency and communication mode for their needs and
+membership.
+
+## Core Working Group
+
+The Core Working Group shepherds and oversees the Tock OS and related
+tools and libraries. Importantly, it serves as a backstop for managing
+contributions that fall outside the purview of existing working
+groups. It also establishes new working groups to handle such
+contributions, and dissolves or re-organizes existing working groups.
+
+Formally, the Core Working Group controls who can directly commit to
+all Tock project repositories and devolves the ability to commit to
+specific repositories or components of repositories to other working
+groups. The Core Working Group, like other working groups, establishes
+its own rules for deciding how to accept contributions as well as how
+to establish and disband working groups.
+
+The Core Working Group's duties are:
+
+- Managing and overseeing code, documentation, testing, and releases
+  for the Tock project.
+  - Defining and communicating overall project goals and direction.
+  - Establishing and delegating responsility over components and
+    sub-projects to working groups.
+  - Ensuring that working groups have the people and resources needed
+    to accomplish their work.
+  - Ensuring working groups are accountable to their delegated
+    responsibilities and the project as a whole.
+  - Coordinating decisions including (but not limited to) code,
+    documentation, testing, and releases that affect purviews
+    delegated to more than one working group.
+  - Facilitating communication channels and consensus among working
+    groups.
+  - Coordinating project-wide changes to teams, structures, or
+    processes.
+
 Existing Working Groups
 -----------------------