GOVERNANCE.md

Crossplane Governance

This document defines governance policies for the entire Crossplane project hosted and managed by the Crossplane organization.

Steering Committee

Steering committee members demonstrate a strong commitment to the project with views in the interest of the broader Crossplane community. They are the stewards of the entire Crossplane organization and are expected to dedicate thoughtful and serious effort towards the goal of general success in the ecosystem.

Responsibilities include:

• Own the overall charter, vision, and direction of the Crossplane project
• Promote broad adoption of the overall project, stewarding the growth and health of the entire community
• Provide guidance for the project maintainers
• Review and approve central/core architecture and design changes that have broad impact across multiple repositories
• Participate in the conflict resolution and voting process at the organization scope when necessary
• Approving new repositories, or archiving repositories in the Crossplane organization
• Add and remove members in the Crossplane organization
• Actively participate in the regularly scheduled steering committee meetings
• Regularly attend the recurring community meetings

The current list of steering committee members is published and updated in OWNERS.md. All steering committee members will be made owners of the Crossplane organization in GitHub.

Bootstrapping the steering committee

The membership of the steering committee will go through an initial bootstrapping process to help transition the stewardship and leadership of the community over a clearly defined time period and process while ensuring that the project remains true to its initial charter. It is essential that the existing vision and strategy continues to guide the project while it continues to grow. Therefore, transition in stewardship should not happen abruptly and the founding leadership should not be diluted too quickly while the project is still being bootstrapped and transitioned.

Therefore, the membership will be bootstrapped over a 2 year period, from the date of acceptance of this governance, as follows:

• Membership will be limited to 5 total seats
• 3 seats are granted to the senior maintainers from the existing Crossplane governance: Bassam Tabbara, Jared Watts, and Nic Cope
  • 2 year term
• 2 seats to be filled by members of the community selected by the above committee members
  • 1 year term
• When the term for a seat expires, the election process will be used to fill the seat with a replacement member with a 2 year term

After the bootstrapping period of 2 years has ended, the following membership rules will become enacted:

• All terms are valid for 2 years
• A single organization may have no more than 2 seats on the committee

Updates During the Bootstrapping Period

We recognize that the bootstrapping period as defined above may not efficiently serve the needs of the community as it experiences more growth and contributors, especially if that growth is rapid. It is very difficult to forecast how the community will grow, but we do believe that the constraints of the given bootstrapping period are a sufficient starting point.

We earnestly intend for the bootstrapping period to appropriately serve the needs of the community. If the community expands in a manner that outgrows the limitations of the steering committee, then we fully intend to make necessary changes, such as adding new seats to the committee in an out-of-band process from the election schedule described in this governance.

The steering committee will have final say on when and how the committee is grown, but we intend for it to be allowed to grow if and when the needs of the community require it. Any changes to the bootstrapping period will require a super majority (at least 2/3 of votes) as described in the updating the governance section.

Membership Qualifications

This section outlines the desired qualifications to become a member of the steering committee. Since members will be selected through the election process after the initial bootstrapping, these qualifications are meant to serve more as guidance and education than as rigid rules.

• Steering committee members in many cases will already be a maintainer on one or more of the repositories within the Crossplane project and be contributing consistently.
• While an existing repository maintainer position is helpful, a proposed member should have also demonstrated broad architectural influence and contributions across diverse areas of the project.
• The proposed member should have consistently exhibited input for the good of the entire project beyond the organization they are affiliated with and their input must have been aligned with the general charter and strategy and always with the big picture in mind.
• There is no minimum time period for contributions to the project by the proposed member.

Election Process

Eligibility for Voting

Voting for steering committee members is open to all current steering committee members and repository maintainers.

Nomination Criteria

• Each eligible voter can nominate up to 2 candidates
• Previous steering committee members are eligible to be nominated again
• An eligible voter can self-nominate
• Anyone can be nominated, they do not have to be an eligible voter
• The nominated candidate must accept the nomination in order to be included in the election
• Each nominated candidate must be endorsed by 2 eligible voters from 2 different organizations (the candidate can self-endorse if they are eligible to vote)

Election

Elections will be held using time-limited Condorcet ranking on CIVS using the IRV method. The top vote getters will be elected to the open seats.

Maximum Representation

As previously stated, when the bootstrapping period ends, the maximum number of steering committee members from any organization will be limited to 2 in order to encourage diversity.

If the results of an election result in greater than 2 members from a single organization, the lowest vote getters from that organization will be removed and replaced by the next highest vote getters until maximum representation on the committee is restored.

If percentages shift because of job changes, acquisitions, or other events, sufficient members of the committee must resign until the maximum representation is restored. If it is impossible to find sufficient members to resign, the entire company’s representation will be removed and new special elections held. In the event of a question of company membership (for example evaluating independence of corporate subsidiaries) a majority of all non-involved steering committee members will decide.

Vacancies

In the event of a resignation or other loss of an elected steering committee member, the candidate with the next most votes from the previous election will be offered the seat. This process will continue until the seat is filled.

In case this fails to fill the seat, a special election for that position will be held as soon as possible. Eligible voters from the most recent election will vote in the special election (i.e., eligibility will not be redetermined at the time of the special election). A committee member elected in a special election will serve out the remainder of the term for the person they are replacing, regardless of the length of that remainder.

Repository Governance

The Crossplane project consists of multiple repositories that are published and maintained as part of the Crossplane organization on Github. Each repository will be subject to the same overall governance model, but will be allowed to have different teams of people (“maintainers”) with permissions and access to the repository. This increases diversity of maintainership in the Crossplane organization, and also increases the velocity of code changes.

Maintainers

Each repository in the Crossplane organization is allowed its own unique set of maintainers. Maintainers have the most experience with the given repo and are expected to have the knowledge and insight to lead its growth and improvement.

In general, adding and removing maintainers for a given repo is the responsibility of the existing maintainer team for that repo and therefore does not require approval from the steering committee. However, in rare cases, the steering committee can veto the addition of a new maintainer by following the conflict resolution process below.

Responsibilities include:

• Strong commitment to the project
• Participate in design and technical discussions
• Participate in the conflict resolution and voting process at the repository scope when necessary
• Seek review and obtain approval from the steering committee when making a change to central architecture that will have broad impact across multiple repositories
• Contribute non-trivial pull requests
• Perform code reviews on other's pull requests
• Ensure that proposed changes to your repository adhere to the established standards, best practices, and guidelines, and that the overall quality and integrity of the code base is upheld.
• Add and remove maintainers to the repository as described below
• Approve and merge pull requests into the code base
• Regularly triage GitHub issues. The areas of specialization possibly listed in OWNERS.md can be used to help with routing an issue/question to the right person.
• Make sure that ongoing PRs are moving forward at the right pace or closing them
• Monitor Crossplane Slack (delayed response is perfectly acceptable), particularly for the area of your repository
• Regularly attend the recurring community meetings
• Periodically attend the recurring steering committee meetings to provide input
• In general continue to be willing to spend at least 25% of their time working on Crossplane (~1.25 business days per week)

The current list of maintainers for each repository is published and updated in each repo’s OWNERS.md file.

Becoming a Maintainer

To become a maintainer for a given repository, you need to demonstrate the following:

• Consistently be seen as a leader in the Crossplane community by fulfilling the maintainer responsibilities listed above to some degree.
• Domain expertise in the area of focus for the repository
• Willingness to contribute and provide value to all areas of the repository’s code base, beyond simply the direct interests of your organization, and to consistently promote the overall charter and vision of the entire Crossplane organization.
• Be extremely proficient with the languages, tools, and frameworks used in the repository
• Consistently demonstrate:
  • Ability to write good solid code and tests
  • Ability to collaborate with the team
  • Understanding of how the team works (policies, processes for testing and code review, etc.)
  • Understanding of the project's code base and coding style

Beyond your contributions to the project, consider:

• If your organization already has a maintainer on a given repository, more maintainers from your org may not be needed. A valid reason, however, is "blast radius" to get more coverage on a large repository.
• Becoming a maintainer generally means that you are going to be spending substantial time (>25%) on Crossplane for the foreseeable future.

If you are meeting these requirements, express interest to the repository’s existing maintainers directly.

• We may ask you to do some PRs from our backlog.
• As you gain experience with the code base and our standards, we will ask you to do code reviews for incoming PRs (i.e., all maintainers are expected to shoulder a proportional share of community reviews).
• After a period of approximately 2-3 months of working together and making sure we see eye to eye, the repository’s existing maintainers will confer and decide whether to grant maintainer status or not, as per the voting process described below. We make no guarantees on the length of time this will take, but 2-3 months is the approximate goal.
  • This time period is up to the discretion of the existing maintainer team and it is possible for new maintainers to be added in a shorter time period than this general guidance.

The existing maintainer team will then add the new maintainer to the repo’s OWNERS.md file, as well as the appropriate GitHub team that allows maintainer permissions to the repo, including merging pull requests into protected branches.

Maintainers for New Repositories

The guidelines of collaborating for 2-3 months may not be feasible for when a new repository is being created in the Crossplane organization. For new repositories, the steering committee can choose to “bootstrap” the maintainer team as they see fit.

Removing a maintainer

If a maintainer is no longer interested or cannot perform the maintainer duties listed above, they should volunteer to be moved to emeritus status. In extreme cases this can also occur by a vote of the maintainers per the voting process below.

Organization Members

Beyond the roles of the steering committee and repository maintainers outlined above, contributors from the community can also be added to the Crossplane organization as a “member”. This affiliation only comes with the base permissions (read-only) for the organization, so the requirements are fairly low. Adding new members has the following benefits:

• Encourages a sense of belonging to the community and encourages collaboration
• Promotes visibility of the project by being displayed on each member’s profile
• Demonstrated tangible growth of the community and adoption of the project
• Allows issues to be assigned to the user

When adding a new member to the organization, they should meet some of the following suggested requirements, which are open to the discretion of the steering committee:

Community members who wish to become members of the Crossplane organization should meet the following requirements, which are open to the discretion of the steering committee:

• Have enabled 2FA on their GitHub account.
• Have joined the Crossplane slack channel.
• Are actively contributing to the Crossplane project. Examples include:
  • opening issues
  • providing feedback on the project
  • engaging in discussions on issues, pull requests, Slack, etc.
  • attending community meetings
• Have reached out to two current Crossplane organization members who have agreed to sponsor their membership request.

Community members that want to join the organization should follow the new member process outlined in the crossplane/org repository. New members should be asked to set the visibility of their Crossplane organization membership to public.

Updating the Governance

This governance will likely be a living document and its policies will therefore need to be updated over time as the community grows. The steering committee has full ownership of this governance and only the committee may make updates to it. Changes can be made at any time, but a super majority (at least 2/3 of votes) is required to approve any updates.

Conflict resolution and voting

In general, it is preferred that technical issues and maintainer membership are amicably worked out between the persons involved. If a dispute cannot be decided independently, the leadership at the appropriate scope can be called in to decide an issue. If that group cannot decide an issue themselves, the issue will be resolved by voting.

Issue Voting Scopes

Issues can be resolved or voted on at different scopes:

• Repository: When an issue or conflict only affects a single repository, then the maintainer team for that repository should resolve or vote on the issue. This includes technical decisions as well as maintainer team membership.
• Organization: If an issue or conflict affects multiple repositories or the Crossplane organization and community at large, the steering committee should resolve or vote on the issue.

Issue Voting Process

The issue voting process is usually a simple majority in which each entity within the voting scope gets a single vote. The following decisions require a super majority (at least 2/3 of votes), all other decisions and changes require only a simple majority:

• Updates to governance by the steering committee
• Additions and removals of maintainers by the repository’s current maintainer team
• Vetoes of maintainer additions by the steering committee

For organization scope voting, repository maintainers do not have a vote in this process, although steering committee members should consider their input.

For formal votes, a specific statement of what is being voted on should be added to the relevant GitHub issue or PR. Voting entities should indicate their yes/no vote on that issue or PR.

After a suitable period of time (goal is by 5 business days), the votes will be tallied and the outcome noted. If any voting entities are unreachable during the voting period, postponing the completion of the voting process should be considered.