PEAR's constitution was adopted by majority vote of active PEAR developers on 2007-03-08, see the Official Results.
The following summary of the constitution is only intended to clarify the most important features of the constitution. The text starting with Constitution is the official Constitution of PEAR.
Most importantly, this document's main purpose is to enable developers to innovate in a supportive environment, to foster good will between developers, to encourage best practices and to provide a clear path for resolving disputes. PEAR is about bringing PHP developers together to provide great solutions to the problems we encounter every day through the PHP language, it is ideal if the constitution is ancillary to the main activity at pear.php.net: coding.
Developers have supreme power over ultimately what bugs/features will be assigned to specific roadmap versions, and to releasing package versions. Developers will have to cede some control over API decisions/QA/docs to the collective that contains their package. Developers may be expected to mentor a new developer and help introduce them to the systems within PEAR (how to package, document, test, etc.)
In other words, the bulk of the day-to-day power will remain with developers, but some of the QA decisions and individual ownership will be relinquished to the collective that contains the package.
Collectives have supreme power over packages within the collective in terms of API decisions, QA, documentation, defining the way collaboration works in the collective, choosing a collective leader or leaders, self-promotion of packages within the collective and assigning mentors to new developers of packages within the collective.
The PEAR Group only has power over issues that affect all of PEAR such as coding standards, CVS karma, and all major decisions made about PEAR as a whole. For example, licenses allowed and what defines a collective are two issues that only the PEAR Group can resolve.
The PEAR president has no power over any of the things above, except for the ability to veto a PEAR Group decision. The president cannot create policy. The president's main job is public relations, talking to people outside of PEAR like an ambassador, trying to recruit new developers or bring packages into PEAR, and to solve big emergencies in a hurry such as finding a new hosting provider should the donated space for pear.php.net disappear.