The Tekton Governance committee is the governing body of the Tekton open source project. It's an elected group that represents the contributors to the project, and has an oversight on governance and technical matters.
- Tekton Governance
The Tekton governance committee consists of five elected individuals and one optional facilitator. The five seats are held for two year terms, staggered by one year: every year either two or three of the seats are up for election.
| Full Name | Company | GitHub | Slack | Elected On | Until |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Frittoli | IBM | afrittoli | @Andrea Frittoli | Feb 2024 | Feb 2026 |
| Billy Lynch | Chainguard | wlynch | @Billy Lynch . | Feb 2024 | Feb 2026 |
| Chitrang Patel (while Dibyo is on leave) | chitrangpatel | @Chitrang | May 2024 | Feb 2025 | |
| Jerop Kipruto | jerop | @Jerop Kipruto | Feb 2023 | Feb 2025 | |
| Vincent Demeester | Red Hat | vdemeester | @vdemeester | Feb 2023 | Feb 2025 |
| On leave till Feb 2025: Dibyo Mukherjee |
Adobe | dibyom | @Dibyo Mukherjee | Feb 2023 | Feb 2025 |
There is no designated facilitator at the moment, the responsibility is distributed across the five members of the committee.
| Full Name | GitHub | Slack | Elected On | Until |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priya Wadhwa | priyawadhwa | @Priya Wadhwa | Feb 2022 | Feb 2023 |
| Christie Wilson | bobcatfish | @Christie Wilson | Bootstrap committee | Feb 2023 |
| Andrew Bayer | abayer | @Andrew Bayer | Feb 2020 | Feb 2022 |
| Jason Hall | ImJasonH | @Jason Hall | Feb 2020 | Feb 2022 |
| Dan Lorenc | dlorenc | @Dan Lorenc | Bootstrap committee | Feb 2020 |
| Kim Lewandowski | kimsterv | @Kim Lewandowski | Bootstrap committee | Feb 2020 |
The governance facilitator role is a non-voting, non-technical advisory position that helps ensure all governance committee meetings are inclusive, and key milestones toward governance are met. The facilitator is a role, meaning it may be occupied by a single individual, or a series of individuals over time. The goal of this position is servant leadership for the project, community, and stakeholders. The committee may choose to make this a permanent role at their discretion. Deliverables may include creation of mailing lists, project tracking boards, governance draft documents, and so forth.
No single employer/company may be represented by more than 40% (i.e., 2 seats) of the board at any one time. If the results of an election result in greater than 40% representation, the lowest vote getters from any particular company will be removed until representation on the board is less than one-third.
If percentages shift because of job changes, acquisitions, or other events, sufficient members of the committee must resign until max one-third representation is achieved. If it is impossible to find sufficient members to resign, the entire company’s representation will be removed and new special elections held. In the event of a question of company membership (for example evaluating independence of corporate subsidiaries) a majority of all non-involved Governance Board members will decide.
The committee MUST:
- Represent a cross-section of interests, not just one company
- Balance technical, architectural, and governance expertise
- Hold staggered terms, sufficient to ensure an orderly transition of power via elections
- Provide designated alternates in cases where quorum is required but not attainable with the current set of members
- Communicate with the Continuous Delivery Foundation on a regular cadence
The committee is responsible for a series of specific artifacts and activities:
- The Code of Conduct and handling violations
- The Project Communication Channels
- The Contribution Process and Development Standards
- The Tekton Mission and Vision
- Select election officers to run elections
It defines the processes around TEPs. Should the community fail to reach consensus on whether to accept a proposed TEP or not, the governance committee can help to break the impasse.
Governance decisions, votes and questions should take place on the [email protected] mailing list.
The governance committee decisions are taken by seeking consensus towards a motion from all its members. If the consensus cannot be reached, the motion may be altered or dropped.
Anyone who has at least 15 contributions in the last 12 months. The dashboard on tekton.devstats.cd.foundation will show GitHub based contributions; contributions that are not GitHub based must be called out explicitly by the voter to confirm eligibility.
Candidates themselves must be contributors who are eligible to vote, and must be nominated by contributors from at least two companies, which can include their own, and they can self-nominate.
Nominations should be sent to [email protected]. The email
should contain:
- The nominee’s email address, github handle, company affiliation, and tektoncd project(s) they contribute to
- For each of two contributors nominating this individual:
- The company they work for
- Their github handles
- The tektoncd project(s) they contribute to
Any nominee who accepts the nomination will be on the ballot.
Elections will be held using time-limited Condorcet ranking on CIVS using the Schulze method. The top vote getters will be elected to the open seats. This is the same process used by the Kubernetes project. Voters must opt into the CIVS system at https://civs1.civs.us/cgi-bin/opt_in.pl or they won't receive an invitation to vote.
Details about the schedule and logistics of the election will be announced in a timely manner by the election officers to eligible candidates and voters via the [email protected] mailing list.
Example timeline:
- Before or during nominations, send an email to all elgible voters to notify them that they are eligble (allowing people time to reach out if they believe they are eligble but are not on our list) (we have used this script in the past)
- Prompt eligble voters to opt into CIVS at https://civs1.civs.us/cgi-bin/opt_in.pl so they will be able to vote
- 1 week for nominations (previously, starting on a Thursday until midnight PST the next Wednesday)
- 1 week for the election itself (starting the following Thursday until midnight PST the next Wednesday)
For every election, the governance board wll choose three election officers, by the following criteria, so as to promote healthy rotation and diversity:
- election officers must be eligible to vote
- two election officers should have served before
- one election officer should have never served before
- each officer should come from a different company to maintain 40% maximal representation
- election officers should not be currently running in the election
The governing board can decide to make exceptions to the above requirements if needed (for example, if two people cannot be found who have served before and want to be officers).
In the event of a resignation or other loss of an elected governance board member, the candidate with the next most votes from the previous election will be offered the seat. This process will continue until the seat is filled.
In case this fails to fill the seat, a special election for that position will be held as soon as possible. Eligible voters from the most recent election will vote in the special election (ie: eligibility will not be redetermined at the time of the special election). A board member elected in a special election will serve out the remainder of the term for the person they are replacing, regardless of the length of that remainder.
For handy reference in future elections, here are some starter templates to send out to announce phases in the election.
To announce opening up nomintations:
Hello Tekton contributors!
Today we officially open up the nominations for the <TBD number of seats> 2 year seats on our governing board [0] !
This section of our bylaws describes the entire process: [1].
If you would like to be nominated, please send an email to [email protected]. The email should contain:
* Your email address, github handle, the company you represent, and tektoncd project(s) you contribute to
* An explanation of how you meet the "15 contributions" criteria, with links to related artifacts if required (e.g. design docs). (Note the easiest way to meet this criteria is to be present on this devstats dashboard [3], however this only shows folks with GitHub based contributions. Please include a description of your non-GitHub contributions if applicable.)
* For each of two contributors nominating you:
* The company they work for
* Their github handles
* The tektoncd project(s) they contribute to
As described in our bylaws [3], the election process requires three election officers, who are responsible for the execution of the election.
Election officers must be eligible to vote and should come each from a different company.
We already have <TBD number of election officers> election officers for this election:
* <TBD names and affiliations>
If you would like to serve as election officer, please reach out to any member of the governing board before the beginning of the voting process.
This is the election timeline:
< TBD fill in timeline, below is example from 2021 >
Feb 24 at midnight PST the nominations will close
Feb 25 we will start the voting process via https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/
Mar 3 we close the election
Please feel free to reach out to anyone on the governing board and/or reply to this email with any questions!
[0] https://github.com/tektoncd/community/blob/main/governance.md
[1] https://github.com/tektoncd/community/blob/main/governance.md#elections
[2] https://tekton.devstats.cd.foundation/d/9/developer-activity-counts-by-repository-group-table?orgId=1&var-period_name=Last%20year&var-metric=contributions&var-repogroup_name=All&var-country_name=All
[3] https://github.com/tektoncd/community/blob/main/governance.md#election-officers
To announce the beginning of the election:
Hello everyone,
The <TBD year> governing board election has begun!
Everyone who is eligible to vote who we know of should now have received an email with a link to vote. If you think you should get one and you didn't, please check all of the email addresses that might be associated with your GitHub account, and your spam folder, and if you still can't find the email, let me know and I can add you to the poll.
Otherwise happy voting! The poll will close at midnight PST on <TBD date>.
Note that we have constrained the board such that no single employer can have more than 40% of the total seats. [0]
[0] https://github.com/tektoncd/community/blob/main/governance.md#elections
When someone joins the governing board:
- They should be added to the list of current governing board members
- They should be granted the permissions given them as members of the governing board
- They will be added to the
#governance-privateand#governanceslack channels - They will be added as facilitators to the Governing Board and Community meeting
- They will be added as managers to the Tekton community Google Drive
- They will be added as admins to the tektoncd GitHub org
- They will be added as team members to the
governing-boardteam in the tektoncd GitHub org - They will be added as owners to the community repo
- They will be added to these mailing lists as owners:
When someone leaves the governing board:
- They should be moved from the list of current governing board members to the list of former members
- The permissions given them as members of the governing board should be revoked, unless they need them to continue to act as build captain
- They may want to be removed as facilitators to the Governing Board and Community meeting (ask them their preference) - they are welcome to continue
- They will be removed from the
#governance-privateslack channel - They will be removed as managers from the Tekton community Google Drive
- They will be removed as admins from the tektoncd GitHub org
- They will be removed as team members to the
governing-boardteam in the tektoncd GitHub org - They will be removed as owners from the community repo
- They will be removed as owners from these mailing lists:
tekton-governance(remove)tekton-nominations(remove)tekton-dev(downgrade to member)tekton-users(downgrade to member)tekton-code-of-conduct(remove)
Members of the governing board will be given access to these resources:
- The GCP project
tekton-releaseswhich is used for test and release infrastructure - The GCP project
tekton-nightlywhich is used for publishing nightly releases for Tekton projects - The GCP projects used by boskos which are used to test against
They have the permissions added through a script.
Any member of the governing board is welcome to take leave from being a governing board member, for any reason (which they are not required to disclose). The actions taken will depend on both of:
- The length of the leave: whether this is greater or less than approximately (at the discretion of the other governing board members) 1/4 of their total term (since terms are 2 years, this means the criteria is whether or not the leave is greater than 6 months).
- Whether their seat will be up for election during the period of their leave
If the leave is less than or equal to 1/4 of the board member's total term, and their seat will not be up for re-election during that time, the governing board member may select someone to be an acting governing board member for the length of the leave. This person must:
If the length of the leave is greater than 1/4 of the total term, or their seat will be up for election during the leave period, the governing board member will be required to step down from their seat and an election will be held.