The Cfengine open source project continues to be used as the backbone of many large and small scale infrastructures world wide. Given the large numbers of users, and companies with a stake in the future of the project, the project leadership is looking to supplement the current governance and contribution mechanisms with an advisory board, as part of its long-term commitment to create a more open governance model.
The primary purpose of the CFEngine Community Advisory Board is to advise CFEngine and the cfengine project core committers team leadership on matters related to supporting the long-term governance, structure, and roadmap of the cfengine open source project. The following main areas are included in this charter:
* Provide a forum for individuals, users, and companies to discuss the
issues under the scope listed below.
* Provide guidance and input to leadership, and where possible, present a
consistent and consolidated opinion from the broader cfengine community.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board is not:
* Intended to serve as an authoritative governance board. The CFEngine
Community Advisory Board advises, but does not manage the cfengine
project core committers team leadership.
* Intended to replace existing mechanisms for community input, governance,
or contribution.
* Intended to assume a formal, fiduciary role with respect to the project.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board members will not be asked to
provide funds to the project, assume liabilities with respect to the
project or their activities, or assume responsibility for enforcing
either trademarks or CFEngine Community Advisory Board recommendations.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board is expected to provide input and formal recommendations regarding the following areas:
* cfengine project long term roadmap
* cfengine project policies and procedures around maintenance,
contributions, core team membership and governance.
* cfengine project policies and procedures around intellectual property,
trademark, and licensing
* cfengine project release schedules
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board will have up to 7 members.
* The CFEngine Product Manager: Eystein Stenberg
* One curator seat
* 5 seats for the top active contributors
* No fee or sponsorship is required for membership
* The membership term will last 12 months. With the exception of the Project
* Lead, all members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms
The selection process is intended to be open, transparent, and guided by objective criteria for membership.
The Curator shall prepare an agenda for and preside over regular meetings of the CFEngine Community Advisory Board. These meetings shall occur as frequently as the CFEngine Community Advisory Board determines is in the project’s best interest, but no more than quarterly.
A member of the CFEngine Community Advisory Board may be removed by a resolution of the CFEngine Community Advisory Board supported by more than two thirds of its membership.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board may fill any vacancy arising by removal or resignation by a simple majority vote to fill the remainder of the term of the vacating member.
The rules of election and membership outlined in this section may be varied by a resolution of the CFEngine Community Advisory Board supported by more than two thirds of its voting membership.
All project contributors are welcome to observe at CFEngine Community Advisory Board meetings.
Up to five seats will be granted to the top community contributors. Contributions including merged pull requests, public presentations, and tooling to support the cfengine ecosystem, over the previous 6 months. These seats will be reserved for active individual contributors who are not employees of CFEngine, Inc.
Of the 5 seats no two members shall be from the same organization.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board is authorized to seek advice and counsel from other interested parties and invited experts as appropriate.
Any outside party wishing to bring an issue before the CFEngine Community Advisory Board may do so by emailing the CFEngine Community Advisory Board at [email protected]
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board shall provide transparent and timely reporting (through any mechanism it deems appropriate) to the Cfengine community at large on all of its activities, subject to the right of any individual to designate their comments and the ensuing discussion as "in confidence," in which case the public report shall contain only a note of the request and an agreed summary (if any) of the substance.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board is being formed at the discretion of CFEngine Inc. CFEngine alone may decide to terminate the CFEngine Community Advisory Board in its sole discretion; provided however, that CFEngine shall first consult the CFEngine Community Advisory Board and Curator.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board and its members shall abide by appropriate antitrust guidelines.
The CFEngine Community Advisory Board will formulate recommendations in conjunction with the following open governance principles:
* Open Contributions: anyone should be able to participate and contribute.
All bugs and tasks related to the core project code itself will be
tracked in a public tracker and all of the source code and all of the
tools needed to build it will be available under an open license
permitting unrestricted use.
* Open technical meritocracy: technical merit over pride of authorship.
Code is contributed for the express purpose of advancing technologies
relevant to the project, effectively separating technology advancement
from individual or commercial intent.
* Open design: Roadmaps are discussed in the open, and designs receive
input from all committers and contributors.
* Influence through contribution: organizations and individuals gain
influence over the project through contribution.
* Open Licensing: code is licensed under the GPL version 3.
Please help us improve this draft by sending your comments and feedback to [email protected].