This is an example governance document for projects that use the very common "maintainer council" system of governance. See GOVERNANCE.md for more information. Thanks to the Jaeger Project for portions of the text below.
This is a template document for CNCF projects that requires editing
before it is ready to use. Read the markdown comments, <!-- COMMENT -->, for
additional guidance. The raw markdown uses TODO to identify areas that
require customization. Replace [TODO: PROJECTNAME] with the name of your project.
[TODO: PROJECTNAME] Maintainers have write access to the project GitHub repository. They can merge their own patches or patches from others. The current maintainers can be found in OWNERS. 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 [TODO: PROJECTNAME] 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.
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 by sending a message to the [developer mailing list](TODO: List Link). A simple majority vote of existing Maintainers approves the application.
Maintainers who are selected will be granted the necessary GitHub rights, and invited to the private maintainer mailing list.
Time zones permitting, Maintainers are expected to participate in the public developer meeting, which occurs [TODO: Details of regular developer or maintainer meeting here].
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.
Any Maintainer may suggest a request for CNCF resources, either in the [mailing list](TODO: link to developer/maintainer 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.
Code of Conduct violations by community members will be discussed and resolved on the private Maintainer mailing list. If the reported CoC violator is a Maintainer, the Maintainers will instead designate two Maintainers to work with CNCF staff in resolving the report.
While most business in [TODO: PROJECTNAME] is conducted by "lazy consensus", periodically
the Maintainers may need to vote on specific actions or changes.
A vote can be taken on the developer mailing list or
the private Maintainer mailing list 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. Maintainers can be removed by a 2/3 majority vote of all Maintainers, and changes to this Governance require a 2/3 vote of all Maintainers.