14. Governance

14.1. Summary

Charliecloud is a member project of the High Performance Software Foundation, and transitively the Linux Foundation. Project oversight is the responsibility of our Technical Steering Committee (TSC), whose current members are:

The TSC holds meetings by video, which are open to the public, with rare exceptions for sensitive matters. These meetings are announced on the mailing lists and in other internet venues where we believe there is sufficient interest. They are not recorded but we do publish agendas and minutes on the project’s GitLab wiki.

To contact the TSC, e-mail dev@lists.charliecloud.io (the Charliecloud development community as a whole) or tsc-private@lists.charliecloud.io (private list for TSC members and Linux Foundation oversight only).

For more information about how the project works:

14.2. Technical Charter (the “Charter”) for Charliecloud a Series of LF Projects, LLC

Note

This is a reformatted version of the document of record, for the convenience of the Charliecloud community. If any discrepancies exist, the document of record governs. Please e-mail manager@lfprojects.org for a copy.

Adopted August 16, 2024

This Charter sets forth the responsibilities and procedures for technical contribution to, and oversight of, the Charliecloud open source project, which has been established as Charliecloud a Series of LF Projects, LLC (the “Project”). LF Projects, LLC (“LF Projects”) is a Delaware series limited liability company. All contributors (including committers, maintainers, and other technical positions) and other participants in the Project (collectively, “Collaborators”) must comply with the terms of this Charter.

14.2.1. Mission and scope of the Project

(a) The mission of the Project is to enable running and management of lightweight, fully unprivileged containers for HPC applications.

(b) The scope of the Project includes collaborative development under the Project License (as defined herein) supporting the mission, including documentation, testing, integration and the creation of other artifacts that aid the development, deployment, operation or adoption of the open source project.

(c) Participation is especially welcome by people who can contribute perspectives not yet well represented in the Project, whether technical or non-technical.

14.2.2. Technical steering committee

(a) The Technical Steering Committee (the “TSC”) is responsible for all technical oversight of the open source Project.

(b) The initial TSC members are: Lucas Caudill, Jordan Ogas, Megan Phinney, Reid Priedhorsky, and Nicholas Sly. The TSC sets its own procedures for member appointment and removal. Current members and procedures are documented in the Project’s code repository.

(c) Unless otherwise documented, project roles are:

(i) Contributors are anyone that contributes code, documentation, or other technical artifacts to the Project.

(ii) Maintainers are Contributors who have the authority to merge changes to (“commit”) technical artifacts to the Project’s code repository.

(iii) Maintainers are appointed and removed by a majority of the entire TSC.

(d) Participation in the Project through becoming a Contributor and/or Maintainer is open to anyone who abides by the terms of this Charter.

(e) The TSC may elect a TSC Chair who presides over meetings of the TSC and serves until their resignation or replacement by the TSC.

(f) The TSC is responsible for all aspects of oversight relating to the Project, which may include:

(i) coordinating the technical direction of the Project;

(ii) establishing requirements for the promotion of Contributors to Maintainer status;

(iii) creating, eliminating, amending, adjusting, and/or refining Project roles;

(iv) approving sub-project or system proposals (including, but not limited to, incubation, deprecation, and changes to a sub-project’s scope);

(v) approving and organizing sub-projects and removing or closing sub-projects;

(vi) creating sub-committees or working groups;

(vii) appointing representatives to work with other projects or organizations;

(viii) establishing community norms, workflows, release procedures, and security issue reporting policies;

(ix) approving and implementing policies and processes for contributing;

(x) coordinating with the series manager of the Project (as provided for in the Series Agreement, the “Series Manager”) to resolve matters or concerns that may arise as set forth in Section 7 of this Charter;

(xi) discussing, seeking consensus, and where necessary, voting on technical matters, including those that affect multiple projects;

(xii) coordinating marketing, events, or communications regarding the Project; and

(xiii) establishing procedures for all oversight matters.

14.2.3. TSC meetings and voting

(a) The TSC will operate on consensus whenever practical. If a decision does require a vote to move the Project forward, TSC members have one vote per member.

(b) TSC meeting quorum is a majority of members. If a quorum is not present, a meeting may continue, but no decisions may be made.

(c) Except as provided in §7(c) and §8(a), votes in a meeting require a majority of TSC members present to pass. Electronic votes outside a meeting require a majority of all members to pass.

(d) In the event a matter cannot be resolved by the TSC, any member may refer it to the Series Manager for assistance in reaching a resolution.

(e) The TSC determines the rules and procedures for its meetings and Project discussions.

14.2.4. Compliance with policies

(a) This Charter is subject to the Series Agreement for the Project and the Operating Agreement of LF Projects. Contributors will comply with the policies of LF Projects as may be adopted and amended by LF Projects, including without limitation the policies listed at https://lfprojects.org/policies/.

(b) The TSC will adopt a code of conduct (“COC”) for the Project, subject to approval by the Series Manager. In the event that a Project-specific COC has not been approved, the LF Projects Code of Conduct listed at https://lfprojects.org/policies will apply. All Contributors must follow the COC. The TSC and/or Series Manager enforce the COC and may impose disciplinary measures, including banning a person/organization from the Project and reporting incidents to employers, professional societies, and other supervisory bodies.

(c) When amending or adopting any policy applicable to the Project, LF Projects will publish such policy, as to be amended or adopted, on its web site at least 30 days prior to such policy taking effect; provided, however, that in the case of any amendment of the Trademark Policy or Terms of Use of LF Projects, any such amendment is effective upon publication on LF Project’s web site.

(d) All Collaborators must allow open participation from any individual or organization meeting the requirements for contributing under this Charter and any policies adopted for all Collaborators by the TSC, regardless of competitive interests. Put another way, the Project community must not seek to exclude any participant based on any criteria, requirement, or reason other than those that are reasonable and applied on a non-discriminatory basis to all Collaborators in the Project community.

(e) The Project will operate in a transparent, open, collaborative, inclusive, and ethical manner at all times. The output of all Project discussions, proposals, timelines, decisions, and status will made open and easily visible to all, unless required by law or LF Projects policy or to protect individual privacy and safety. Any potential violations of this requirement should be reported immediately to the Series Manager.

14.2.5. Community assets

(a) LF Projects will hold title to all trade or service marks used by the Project (“Project Trademarks”), whether based on common law or registered rights. Project Trademarks will be transferred and assigned to LF Projects to hold on behalf of the Project. Any use of any Project Trademarks by Collaborators in the Project will be in accordance with the license from LF Projects and inure to the benefit of LF Projects.

(b) The Project will, as permitted and in accordance with such license from LF Projects, develop and own all Project code repositories and related infrastructure, social media accounts, and domain names.

(c) Under no circumstances will LF Projects be expected or required to undertake any action on behalf of the Project that is inconsistent with the tax-exempt status or purpose, as applicable, of the Joint Development Foundation or LF Projects, LLC.

14.2.6. General rules and operations

(a) The Project will operate in a professional manner consistent with maintaining a cohesive and effective community while also maintaining the goodwill and esteem of LF Projects, Joint Development Foundation, and other partner organizations in the open source community.

(b) The Project will respect the rights of all trademark owners, including any branding and trademark usage guidelines.

14.2.7. Intellectual property policy

(a) Contributors acknowledge that (i) the copyright in all new contributions will be retained by the copyright holder as independent works of authorship and (ii) no contributor or copyright holder will be required to assign copyrights to the Project.

(b) Except as described in Section 7(c), all contributions to the Project are subject to:

(i) All new inbound contributions of code and documentation to the Project must be made using Apache License, Version 2.0 available at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 (the “Project License”).

(ii) All new inbound contributions must also be accompanied by a Developer Certificate of Origin (http://developercertificate.org) sign-off that binds the authorized contributor and, if not self-employed, their employer to the applicable license;

(iii) All outbound contributions will be made available under the Project License.

(iv) The Project may seek to integrate and contribute back to other open source projects (“Upstream Projects”). In such cases, the Project will conform to all license requirements of the Upstream Projects, including dependencies, leveraged by the Project. Upstream Project code contributions not stored within the Project’s main code repository will comply with the contribution process and license terms for the applicable Upstream Project.

(c) The TSC may approve the use of alternative license(s) for inbound or outbound contributions on an exception basis. License exceptions must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the entire TSC.

(d) Contributed files should contain license information, such as SPDX short form identifiers, indicating the open source license(s) pertaining to the file.

14.2.8. Amendments

(a) This charter may be amended by two-thirds vote of the entire TSC and approval by LF Projects.