etcd-io__etcd/GOVERNANCE.md

etcd Governance

Principles

The etcd community adheres to the following principles:

• Open: etcd is open source.
• Welcoming and respectful: See Code of Conduct.
• Transparent and accessible: Changes to the etcd code repository and CNCF related activities (e.g. level, involvement, etc) are done in public.
• Merit: Ideas and contributions are accepted according to their technical merit for the betterment of the project. For specific guidance on practical contribution steps please see CONTRIBUTING guide.

Maintainers

Maintainers are first and foremost contributors that have shown they are committed to the long term success of a project. Maintainership is about building trust with the current maintainers of the project and being a person that they can depend on to make decisions in the best interest of the project in a consistent manner. The maintainers role can be a top-level or restricted to certain package/feature depending upon their commitment in fulfilling the expected responsibilities as explained below.

Top-level maintainer

• Running the etcd release processes
• Ownership of test and debug infrastructure
• Triage GitHub issues to keep the issue count low (goal: under 100)
• Regularly review GitHub pull requests across all pkgs
• Providing cross pkg design review
• Monitor email aliases
• Participate when called upon in the security disclosure and release process
• General project maintenance

Package/feature maintainer

• Ownership of test and debug failures in a pkg/feature
• Resolution of bugs triaged to a package/feature
• Regularly review pull requests to the pkg subsystem

Contributors who are interested in becoming a maintainer, if performing these responsibilities, should discuss their interest with the existing maintainers. New maintainers must be nominated by an existing maintainer and must be elected by a supermajority of maintainers. Likewise, maintainers can be removed by a supermajority of the maintainers and moved to emeritus status.

Life priorities, interests, and passions can change. If a maintainer needs to step down, inform other maintainers about this intention, and if possible, help find someone to pick up the related work. At the very least, ensure the related work can be continued. Afterward, create a pull request to remove yourself from the MAINTAINERS file.

Reviewers

Reviewers are contributors who have demonstrated greater skill in reviewing the code contribution from other contributors. Their LGTM counts towards merging a code change into the project. A reviewer is generally on the ladder towards maintainership. New reviewers must be nominated by an existing maintainer and must be elected by a supermajority of maintainers. Likewise, reviewers can be removed by a supermajority of the maintainers or can resign by notifying the maintainers.

Decision making process

Decisions are built on consensus between maintainers publicly. Proposals and ideas can either be submitted for agreement via a GitHub issue or PR, or by sending an email to etcd-maintainers@googlegroups.com.

Conflict resolution

In general, we prefer that technical issues and maintainer membership are amicably worked out between the persons involved. However, any technical dispute that has reached an impasse with a subset of the community, any contributor may open a GitHub issue or PR or send an email to etcd-maintainers@googlegroups.com. If the maintainers themselves cannot decide an issue, the issue will be resolved by a supermajority of the maintainers.

Changes in Governance

Changes in project governance could be initiated by opening a GitHub PR.