Due to a ransomware attack, the wiki was reverted to a July 2022 version. . We apologize for the lack of a more recent valid backup.
DRAFT - UNDER EDIT - DO NOT USE OR UPDATE
Version 2.0, Bill Snow (ON.Lab), Scott Nicholas (Linux Foundation)
Governance Model
Governance of the ONOS™ ONOS® project is a hybrid. It attempts to take what has worked well for open source projects and leave out what didn’t work so well. Mostly, it is governed as intended to foster a technical meritocracy – those who contribute the most have the most influence on the technical direction and decisions. There is also an element of benevolent stewardship. This is what gives the project its strong vision, goals, and technical shepherding. More specifically, ONOS governance is
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A technical meritocracy because technical teams manage themselves to do what is technically right for the community. People who make the most contributions to their teams have the most influence. In addition, technical project leaders and steering team members are elected by active contributors.
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within the context of stewardship by the ONOS Chief Architect and the ON.Lab Board of Directors. ON.Lab is a nonprofit public benefit corporation, and provides engineering resources on behalf of the ONOS Project.
Goals
The goals of ONOS project governance are to:
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The ONOS project is governed by four steering teams and a board of directors. The four teams are the technical steering team, the use case team, the release management team, and the community team. ONOS subprojects are formed as part of one of the four teams.
ONOS Board
The board is a group of representatives from the partner organizations. It is governed by the Chairman of the Board (the “Chairman”). The board has the following roles and responsibilities:
- Strategic direction
- New member recruiting
- Conflict resolution between teams
- Ambassadors for ONOS
- ONOS trademark management management
- Elect the lead of the Use Case Steering Team
The board leaves all technical decisions to the technical steering team in the spirit of open source technical meritocracy practice.
The governance document for the board can be found found here.
Steering Teams
Four steering teams govern the ONOS project.
Technical Steering Team
The technical steering team is responsible for all technical decisions in the project. They are responsible for the content and structure of the code base and for all technical priorities with respect to the code base. The ONOS chief architect (“Chief Architect”) is the team lead of the technical steering team. The ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to remove and replace the lead of the technical steering team Chief Architect at any time.
Email: onos-tech-steering-team@onosproject.org - Archive
Use Case Steering Team
The use case steering team is responsible for prioritizing the use cases that will be developed. They are responsible for the prioritization of all use cases and for all capabilities within those use cases. The use case steering team provides the customer requirements to the ONOS technical team. The use case steering team is lead by an elected representative nominated from the group of members who are customers (in this case, service providers).
Email: onos-use-case-team@onosproject.org - Archive
Release Management Team
The release management team owns the release management process and is responsible to make sure that releases happen on time with the highest quality. The release management team owns the responsibility for determining the priority of features targeted for a particular release. The release management team lead is elected by the technical committers. The ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to approve or veto this selection, and to appoint the team lead.
Email: onos-release-team@onosproject.org - Archive
Community Steering Team
The community steering team is responsible for the care and feeding of the community. It is responsible to address community issues, to grow the community and to make sure that the community thrives. The community steering team lead is elected by the technical committers. The The ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to approve or veto this selection, and to appoint the team lead.
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The Board is composed of a chairman and one member from ON.Lab and each partner organization. In addition, each partner may name one alternative member to attend meetings in case the primary member is unable to attend. The maximum number of partner board members is 15. Each organization may only have one member on the board. The current board is found is found here.
Elections
The Chairman of the Board is chosen by the Open Networking Laboratory Board of Directors. Each organization is responsible for nominating their board member. The chairman of the board Chairman must approve the nomination. Board members are (re) nominated/approved every year. Nominations/approvals are held in the first quarter of each calendar year. If any board member must leave before the end of their term, their organization will nominate a new member and that member must be approved by the Chairman of the Board. If the Chairman of the Board must step down, then the ON.Lab Board of Directors will select a new Chairman.
2016 Elections Process and Information can be found here.
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Should a tie occur on a vote, the Chairman of the Board will break the tie.
Technical Steering Team
The technical steering team is responsible for all technical decisions having to do with the ONOS project and the ONOS core codebase (“ONOS Core”). The ONOS core codebase is the software distribution represented by the ONOS trademark. Use case applications, southbound plug-ins for non-OpenFlow devices, sample applications, vendor proprietary extensions may or may not be part of the ONOS coreCore. It is entirely up to the technical steering team to decide what constitutes the ONOS core codebasethe ONOS Core. Projects within the ONOS Project follow the project lifecycle document which can be found [here]. The TST may amend the project lifecycle document (“Project Lifecycle”) with the approval of the Chief Architect.
As per the Project Lifecycle, incubated projects may graduate to either Mature-state or Core-state status. It is intended that threshold for having projects graduate to Mature-state will be lower and the process streamlined relative to having projects graduate to Core-state. The TST is intended to be an oversight body, and is not intended to have responsibility for patch-level project decisions.
The membership is found on the home page.
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The definitive section describing technical roles can be found here. The TST, with approval of the Chief Architect, shall have authority to modify, delete and create new technical roles from time to time.
- "Contributor": Anyone who signs a CLA and contributes a patchset and has had their code accepted in review by any Project (whether an ONOS Core Project or a non-Core Project). Provided that the CLA is signed, anyone can participate in the project by submitting code for consideration. For additional information on how to start contributing code to the project please see A Beginner's Guide to Contribution.
- "Reviewer": Everyone can review any patchset.
- "Module owner": Someone who can give a +2 review for a part of the codebase and submit code in that area
- "Project owner": Someone who can give a +2 review and submit anywhere in the codebase
Voting member: A Any contributor, a module owner, or a project owner who has submitted (and/ had accepted) or reviewed, as applicable, at least two patchsets in the prior twelve (12) months.
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Membership Elections
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New technical steering team members will be elected on a yearly basis. Elections are held in the first quarter of each calendar year. At the time of election the following occurs:
- The Chief Architect is (re) appointed
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- by the
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- board of
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- Open Networking Laboratory.
- The
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- Chief Architect
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- decides the appropriate size of the technical steering team. The ON.Lab board of directors has veto power on the choice of size.
- The election procedures are documented here [link to the TST membership and election document].
If a team member leaves the team during the year, it is up to the Chief Architect to decide whether or not to hold an election to put someone else into the position before the next scheduled election.
The TST shall hold annual elections in the first quarter of the year. In the event that any Elected Member seat becomes vacant more than one (1) month prior to the annual election, the Chief Architect may call for elections for any such seat.
Elections shall be conducted as follows:
- The TST shall solicit the voting members for nominations via the main developer mailing list (onos-dev@onosproject.org)
- Interested voting members may nominate themselves or other voting members
- The TST shall distribute to the mailing list a slate of nominees and conduct the election.
The TST should use a multiple-candidate method of voting, such as Helios or single transferable vote. Multiple-candidate methods may be replaced by a simple election by a plurality of votes when there are only two candidates for one position to be filled. No election is required if there is only one candidate running and no voting member voices an objection. In the event of a tied outcome, the Chief Architect may determine the winner.
Other Changes
- If the ONOS Chief Architect leaves ON.Lab for any reason the ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to appoint a new ONOS Chief Architect.
If any member of the technical steering team changes their corporate affiliation during their
tenure, and if the change of employment is to an employer already represented in the TST, continued membership in the TST must be approved by the Chief Architecttenure and, as a result, joins an organization that already has (on a consolidated basis) direct representation on the TST, the ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to remove them from their role on the technical steering team.
The ON.Lab board of directors reserves the right to select a new Chief Architect at any time.
Technical Advisory Group (currently not used)
The Technical Steering Team may organize a technical advisory group of architects, developers, and/or other community members. Members of this group do not have to have any affiliation with the ONOS project. The goal of this group is twofold: solicit input from other experts in the field to guide the ONOS architecture and generate advocacy in the larger ecosystem for the work being done with ONOS. The people on the technical advisory group are all chosen by the Technical Steering Team.
The technical steering team will meet with the technical advisory group (if such a group is organized) 2-4 times a year.
Use Case Steering Team
The use case steering team is responsible for choosing and prioritizing the use cases worked on by the community.
Each service provider has one representative on the use case steering team.The current team members are found on their home page.
Membership
The team representatives are by definition the group of board members from the service providers. The lead is elected on a yearly basis by the board. How each service provider chooses their representative is outside the scope of this document. Elections Elections are held in the first quarter of each calendar year. At At the time of the election, the following will take place:
- The team lead is nominated by any service provider partner, including themselves, to be the team lead.
- The entire board votes on the candidates to select the team lead.
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If the team lead must step down before an election then a special election will be called to elect a new team leader.
Release Management Team
The Release Management team is responsible for all decisions having to do with requirements and packaging of the release components (note, one can substitute the Agile term “stories” for “requirements” - in this context it is the same thing). More specifically, they own the
Requirements database maintenance (Jira)
Requirements acceptance process
Requirements prioritization process
Release content prioritization
Release process (how subprojects get project code integrated)
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Elections are held in the first quarter of each calendar year. The team lead of the release management team will be (re) elected by the technical committersvoting community. during During an election, the following will occur:
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Elections are held in the first quarter of each calendar year. The team lead of the community steering team will be (re) elected by the technical committersvoting community. In an election, the following will occur:
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Anyone may volunteer to be a member of the team. It is up to the team lead to decide how large the team is and who is accepted onto the team.
Subprojects
It is up to the subproject team to govern themselves as they feel appropriate. Since subprojects are attached to steering teams, the steering team may get involved to help with decision making and/or conflict resolution.
Decision Making
Subprojects govern themselves and are driven by those who volunteer to be on them. When a more formal decision must be made (outside impact or coordination with other teams/subprojects is needed) lazy consensus is used: a few positive votes with no negative votes is sufficient to get things moving. Negative votes must provide an alternative proposal and a detailed explanation of the reason for the negative vote. The subproject team will then work to resolve the negative vote.
Conflict Resolution and Escalation
When conflicts cannot be resolved in a subproject, the appropriate steering team will take responsibility to make the decision for the subproject. If the steering team cannot reach agreement then the Board will make the decision.