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bpfd Project Governance

The bpfd project is dedicated to creating an easy way to run eBPF programs on a single host and in clusters. This governance explains how the project is run.

Values

The bpfd project and its leadership embrace the following values:

  • Openness: Communication and decision-making happens in the open and is discoverable for future reference. As much as possible, all discussions and work take place in public forums and open repositories.

  • Fairness: All stakeholders have the opportunity to provide feedback and submit contributions, which will be considered on their merits.

  • Community over Product or Company: Sustaining and growing our community takes priority over shipping code or sponsors' organizational goals. Each contributor participates in the project as an individual.

  • Inclusivity: We innovate through different perspectives and skill sets, which can only be accomplished in a welcoming and respectful environment.

  • Participation: Responsibilities within the project are earned through participation, and there is a clear path up the contributor ladder into leadership positions.

Maintainers

bpfd Maintainers have write access to the project GitHub repository. They can merge their patches or patches from others. The list of current maintainers can be found at MAINTAINERS.md. Maintainers collectively manage the project's resources and contributors.

This privilege is granted with some expectation of responsibility: maintainers are people who care about the bpfd project and want to help it grow and improve. A maintainer is not just someone who can make changes, but someone who has demonstrated their ability to collaborate with the team, get the most knowledgeable people to review code and docs, contribute high-quality code, and follow through to fix issues (in code or tests).

A maintainer is a contributor to the project's success and a citizen helping the project succeed.

The collective team of all Maintainers is known as the Maintainer Council, which is the governing body for the project.

Becoming a Maintainer

To become a Maintainer you need to demonstrate the following:

  • commitment to the project:
  • participate in discussions, contributions, code and documentation reviews, for 6 months or more,
  • perform reviews for 10 non-trivial pull requests,
  • contribute 10 non-trivial pull requests and have them merged,
  • ability to write quality code and/or documentation,
  • 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 and documentation style.

A new Maintainer must be proposed by an existing maintainer by opening a Pull Request on GitHub to update the MAINTAINERS.md file. A simple majority vote of existing Maintainers approves the application. Maintainer nominations will be evaluated without prejudice to employers or demographics.

Maintainers who are selected will be granted the necessary GitHub rights.

Removing a Maintainer

Maintainers may resign at any time if they feel that they will not be able to continue fulfilling their project duties.

Maintainers may also be removed after being inactive, failing to fulfill their Maintainer responsibilities, violating the Code of Conduct, or for other reasons. Inactivity is defined as a period of very low or no activity in the project for a year or more, with no definite schedule to return to full Maintainer activity.

A Maintainer may be removed at any time by a 2/3 vote of the remaining maintainers.

Depending on the reason for removal, a Maintainer may be converted to Emeritus status. Emeritus Maintainers will still be consulted on some project matters and can be rapidly returned to Maintainer status if their availability changes.

Meetings

Time zones permitting, Maintainers are expected to participate in the public developer meeting, detailed in the meetings document.

Maintainers will also have closed meetings to discuss security reports or Code of Conduct violations. Such meetings should be scheduled by any Maintainer on receipt of a security issue or CoC report. All current Maintainers must be invited to such closed meetings, except for any Maintainer who is accused of a CoC violation.

Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct violations by community members will be discussed and resolved on the private maintainer Slack channel.

Security Response Team

The Maintainers will appoint a Security Response Team to handle security reports. This committee may simply consist of the Maintainer Council themselves. If this responsibility is delegated, the Maintainers will appoint a team of at least two contributors to handle it. The Maintainers will review who is assigned to this at least once a year.

The Security Response Team is responsible for handling all reports of security holes and breaches according to the security policy.

Voting

While most business in bpfd is conducted by "lazy consensus", periodically the Maintainers may need to vote on specific actions or changes. A vote can be taken on the private developer slack channel for security or conduct matters.
Votes may also be taken at the developer meeting. Any Maintainer may demand a vote be taken.

Most votes require a simple majority of all Maintainers to succeed, except where otherwise noted. Two-thirds majority votes mean at least two-thirds of all existing maintainers.

Modifying this Charter

Changes to this Governance and its supporting documents may be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Maintainers.