Governance

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Network Serivce Mesh Project Governance

The Network Serivce Mesh project is dedicated to creating the Hybrid/Multi-cloud IP Service Mesh.
This governance explains how the project is run.

Values

The Network Service Mesh 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

Network Service Mesh Maintainers have write access to any NSM GitHub repository. They can merge their own patches or patches from others. The current maintainers can be found in maintainers. Maintainers collectively manage the project’s resources and contributors.

This privilege is granted with some expectation of responsibility: maintainers are people who care about NSM 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.

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 [TODO: Time Period] or more,
    • perform reviews for [TODO:Number] non-trivial pull requests,
    • contribute [TODO:Number] 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 on Weekly NSM meeting. A simple majority vote of existing Maintainers approves the application. Maintainers nominations will be evaluated without prejudice to employer or demographics.

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, failure to fulfill their Maintainer responsibilities, violating the Code of Conduct, or 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, which occurs weekly: NSM Community Meeting.

Maintainers will also have closed meetings in order 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.

CNCF Resources

Any Maintainer may suggest a request for CNCF resources, either in the mailing list, or during a meeting. A simple majority of Maintainers approves the request. The Maintainers may also choose to delegate working with the CNCF to non-Maintainer community members, who will then be added to the CNCF’s Maintainer List for that purpose.

Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct violations by community members will be discussed and resolved on the TODO. If a Maintainer is directly involved in the report, the Maintainers will instead designate two Maintainers to work with the CNCF Code of Conduct Committee in resolving it.

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.

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