This document describes the bootstrap governance process under which the project will operate until the final governance process is identified.
⚠️ This is a temporary (aka bootstrap) governance document that is effective until the project is fully established. See this issue for the scope of the full governance document.
In April 2022 Project Maintainers will assign seven individuals to be members of the Bootstrap Governing Committee. This is a temporary arrangement that should be replaced by an elected governing body before March 2024. At least 3 governing board members should be elected by March 2023.
The Bootstrap Governing Committee is responsible for representing the project, making a final decision if a consensus cannot be reached (see Decision Making), handling the Code of Conduct escalations, defining and approving with the project members the final governance model, and organizing elections for the elected governance board body.
The project has a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) that consists of three maintainers who actively contribute to the project. The role of the steering committee is to facilitate development of the OpenFeature specification and other technical decisions in the project. The responsibilities include reviewing the incoming enhancement proposal and pull requests, driving the decision making process and building consensus among the OpenFeature community. At the moment, TSC members do not get special permissions beyond what other maintainers have.
The technical steering committee is initially bootstrapped by 3 contributors based on the consensus of contributors and maintainers of the project. Their term is one year. Then the steering committee members are re-elected based on the public nomination and decision making process. The same happens when a TSC member steps down from the role in the middle of the term, an acting TSC member is appointed by the community until the end of the term.
At any time, less than 50% of the TSC members can be affiliated with a single company. If the affiliation changes during the term and violates the rule, one of the TSC members should step down.
Decisions are made by a consensus of Project Members and Interested Parties. If this consensus cannot be reached, the decision can be made by the plain majority vote of Bootstrap Governing Committee Members.
Key discussions and decisions should happen asynchronously in communication channels like GitHub Issues, discussions or pull requests. Technical decisions are expected to be documented in the OpenFeature Specification. The community decisions should be documented in this Governance repository.
The project conducts regular project meetings hosted by its maintainers and contributors. These meetings are used as additional discussion and consensus building but not for making decisions without prior discussion in async channels.
The following project roles are defined at the moment: Project member, Maintainer, Bootstrap Governance Committee Member. These roles are defined below.
Project members are a group of contributors with the minimum entry bar. They are welcome to take leadership in initiatives and to participate in the project's open governance and decision making process.
While the project is in the bootstrap governance phase, any individual who declares their interest in the Interested Parties list will considered as project member and invited to the project's GitHub organization. It may require signing a Contributor License Agreement should it be introduced in the project.
Maintainers take responsibility for maintaining OpenFeature projects and repositories. They review and integrate changes submitted to their repositories, and also ensure that the decision making process is followed. Maintainer status can be granted within a single repository or within the entire GitHub organization.
Maintainers are elected by project members according to the Decision Making process. They are expected to demonstrate substantial code or non-code contributions to the project, and to also be able to dedicate some time to maintenance and regular participation in the community.
In addition to the elected maintainer roles, 3 individuals get the maintainer status at the inception of the project:
- Michael Beemer, @beeme1mr, Dynatrace
- Alois Reitbauer, @AloisReitbauer, Dynatrace/CNCF/Keptn
- Oleg Nenashev, @oleg-nenashev, Dynatrace/CDF/Jenkins/Keptn
⚠️ This is a temporary role while the bootstrap governance is active. In the future this role will be replaced by an elected Governance Committee Member role.
Bootstrap Governance Committee members are responsible for representing the project in communications with organizations, including but not limited to contributor companies, adopters, vendors and foundations. Apart from the representative role, they can make a final decision when a consensus cannot be reached.
In April 2022 this role will be assigned by project maintainers to seven individuals listed in Interested Parties. Each company/organization should have less than 50% of the seats, and hence an organization can have only up to three seats. The project maintainers are also responsible to review their nominations with the community, and to do the best effort to address any feedback/concerns.