This document describes the bootstrapping process for the Kubernetes Steering Committee. It describes the formation of the initial steering committee and its core responsibilities. This includes its governance processes and processes to reform itself as necessary.
The initial role of the steering committee is to instantiate the formal process for Kubernetes governance. In addition to defining the initial governance process, the bootstrap committee strongly believes that it is important to provide a means for iterating the processes defined by the steering committee. We do not believe that we will get it right the first time, or possibly ever, and won’t even complete the governance development in a single shot. The role of the steering committee is to be a live, responsive body that can refactor and reform as necessary to adapt to a changing project and community.
The Steering Committee has a set of rights and responsibilities including the following:
- Decide which project subgroups are responsible for each area of the project and to delegate appropriate authority those groups.
- Define, evolve, and defend the vision, values, mission, and scope of the project - to establish and maintain the soul of Kubernetes
- Charter and refine policy for defining new community groups (including Special Interest Groups, Working Groups, and Committees), and establish transparency and accountability policies for such groups
- Define, evolve, and defend a Code of Conduct, which must include a neutral, unbiased process for resolving conflicts
- Define and evolve project governance structures and policies, including how contributors become committers/maintainers, approvers, reviewers, members, etc.
- Decide, for the purpose of elections, who is a member of standing of the Kubernetes project, and what privileges that entails
- Decide which sub-projects are part of the Kubernetes project, including accepting new sub-projects and pruning existing sub-projects to maintain community focus
- Decide how and when official releases of Kubernetes artifacts are made and what they include
- Control access to, establish processes regarding, and provide a final escalation path for any Kubernetes repository, which currently includes all repositories under the github organizations kubernetes, kubernetes-incubator, kubernetes-security, and kubernetes-client, and is expected to expand in the future
- Control and delegate access to and establish processes regarding other project resources/assets, including artifact repositories, build and test infrastructure, web sites and their domains, blogs, social-media accounts, etc.
- Define what a conformant Kubernetes cluster is as part of any certification process
- Manage the Kubernetes brand to decide which things can be called “Kubernetes” and how that mark can be used in relation to other efforts or vendors.
- Declare a release, so that the committee can ensure quality/feature/other requirements are met.
- Request funds and other support from the CNCF (e.g. marketing, press, etc.)
To bootstrap the process of Kubernetes governance, seven individuals (Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, Clayton Coleman, Brian Grant, Tim Hockin, Sarah Novotny and Brandon Philips) were identified to be the Bootstrap Committee, to provide the initial process that can bootstrap the remainder of the process.
The Bootstrap Committee will be replaced by the Kubernetes Steering Committee. Ultimately, the Kubernetes Steering Committee will consist of 7 members of the community elected for 2 year terms. The terms will be staggered with 1 year elections (alternating 4 seats and 3 seats).
To provide a level of continuity as this process is established, the initial committee will include continuity members, expanding the size to 13 members, which will be eliminated after the first two years.
This year (2017) as this proposal is enacted, the committee will consist of the members of the bootstrap committee (Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, Clayton Coleman, Brian Grant, Tim Hockin, Sarah Novotny, Brandon Philips) plus 6 positions to be elected from the community. Of the 6 members that are elected, 3 will have a 2 year term and 3 will have 1 year term.
One year later (in 2018) there will be an election of the 3 people serving a one year term. The continuity members of the original bootstrap committee will continue to serve.
One year after that (2019), the continuity positions will be eliminated and the committee will shrink to the final size of 7. There will be an election to fill the 4 open seats on the steering committee. The previous continuity members are eligible to run for these seats.
The committee will continue to iterate with alternating elections of three and four members each year.
For clarity, a table describing this process is given below:
| Year | Continuity | Cohort 1 | Cohort 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 7 people | 3 people (2yr term) | 3 people (1yr term) |
| 2018 | - | - | 3 people (2yr term) |
| 2019 | 0 people | 4 people (2yr term) | - |
| 2020 | - | - | 3 people (2yr term) |
| 2021 | - | 4 people (2yr term) | - |
Special note: The bootstrap committee pledges to recuse itself from any direct election activities while they serve as continuity members. Members of the bootstrap committee will refrain from endorsing or otherwise advocating for any candidate (with the exception that the members of the bootstrap committee may vote in the elections, and may choose to run in the 2019 election).
Initial standing in the Kubernetes community will be defined by the union of:
- SIG leads
- Approvers and reviewers in any Kubernetes owned repositories
- Anyone with write access to a Kubernetes owned repository
The bootstrap committee explicitly believes that this heuristic will be inaccurate and not represent the entire community. An exception form will be provided for people who have contributed to the project but may not meet these criteria. Exception applications will be approved by the bootstrap committee will vote on this eligibility, with simple majority determining eligibility. The exception process will be used as data points for refining the criteria for the future.
Within its first year, the Steering Committee will redefine these criteria around a more robust idea of community membership.
Anyone may nominate either themselves or someone else to be a candidate in the election. To be ratified as a candidate, the nominee must accept the nomination and three Members of Standing (including the nominator, if she/he has standing) from three different employers, must endorse the nomination.
Nominators are free to nominate as many people as they wish to. Members of Standing may endorse multiple nominees, but we expect endorsements to be be in good faith. If this turns out to be a problem, this will be reconsidered.
All Members of Standing are eligible to vote for the steering committee members.
Elections will be held using time-limited Condorcet ranking on CIVS. The top vote getters will be elected to the respective positions.
To encourage diversity there will be a maximum of one-third representation on the Steering Committee from any one company at any time. If the results of an election result in greater than 1/3 representation, the lowest vote getters from any particular company will be removed until representation on the committee 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 Steering Committee members will decide.
Because of the need to bootstrap a staggered election cycle, some of the initial committee members will only serve a single year term. These three people will be the lowest vote getters from the top six in the initial election.
The bootstrap committee will operate the election and circulate a timeline for nominations, and the vote.
In the event of a resignation or other loss of a steering committee 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. The same group of people as described in “eligibility for voting” will vote in the special election. A committee 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. If a continuity member resigns or otherwise is lost from the Committee, that position will not be filled.
To reduce size of company advantages, candidates may not use their companies internal or external brand to campaign. Their employers cannot solicit votes on their behalf or sponsor candidates from partner organizations. Simply put, elections highlight individuals outside of their corporate role and should be treated as “brand free” activities.
At any time the steering committee may vote, via super majority (greater than two-thirds of votes), to rewrite or remove any part of this charter. Beyond small tweaks, this should be used sparingly, if ever, and in the presence of clear failures of the process. We explicitly do not allocate a role for the broader community in reformulating governance, we believe that in such a case the community will “vote with their feet” by either leaving or forking the project.
Members of the steering committee will graduate to becoming Emeritus members of the steering committee.
Regular steering committee meetings will be held, at least once per month. The entire steering committee is generally expected to attend every meeting, but quorum is met with 2/3 attendance. If a member misses more than 50% of all meetings held within a six month period then they will be removed from the committee and a special election will be held. Recorded videos of the meetings will be made publicly available in a timely manner.
Non-recorded, closed meetings are reserved for confidential matters (for example code of conduct issues) which are not appropriate to be shared with the broader community. Steering committee meetings can be made closed by a simple majority vote of the steering committee members, but closed meetings do not count towards the required meeting frequency. The steering committee will inform the community if a particular meeting is closed, as well as the general reasons for this, prior to the meeting taking place.