governance.md

This document describes the governance rules of the gRPC project / organization. It is meant to be followed by all the repositories in the project and the gRPC community.

Principles

The gRPC community adheres to the following principles:

• Open: gRPC is open source. See repository guidelines and CLA below.
• Welcoming and respectful: See Code of Conduct below.
• Transparent and accessible: Work and collaboration are done in public.
• Merit: Ideas and contributions are accepted according to their technical merit and alignment with project objectives, scope, and design principles.

Code Of Conduct

The gRPC community abides by the CNCF code of conduct. Here is an excerpt:

As contributors and maintainers of this project, and in the interest of fostering an open and welcoming community, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities.

The gRPC developers and community are expected to follow the values defined in the CNCF charter. As a member of the gRPC project, you represent the project and your fellow contributors. We value our community tremendously and we'd like to keep cultivating a friendly and collaborative environment for our contributors and users. We want everyone in the community to have positive experiences.

Decision Making And Voting

gRPC is an open-source project / organization with an open collaboration philosophy. This means that the Github project is the source of truth for every aspect of the project, including its philosophy, design, road map, and APIs. If it's part of the project, it's in the repos. If it's in the repos, it's part of the project.

As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the repository. An implementation change is a change to the source code. An API change is a change to the API specification. A philosophy change is a change to the philosophy manifesto, and so on.

All decisions affecting gRPC, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:

• Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this.
• Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this.
• Step 3: Maintainers accept or refuse the pull request.

Exceptions to this are made for:

• the election of the steering committee, the details of which are in this document
• changes to the contributor ladder status of an individual, the requirements for which are outlined in the contributor ladder

In general, we prefer that technical issues are amicably worked out between the persons involved. If a dispute cannot be decided independently, the Maintainers can be called in to resolve the issue by voting. The same PR can be used or a separate PR can be opened in the concerned repository for voting. The title of a PR related to voting should be prefixed with “[vote]”. Such PRs should remain open for a minimum of two weeks unless a decision has been reached sooner. A formal vote on the PR is not required if a majority of the maintainers have already agreed in other forums or meetings. In such cases, a detailed comment must be added by a Maintainer before approving or rejecting the PR. In such a case, only an existing Maintainer can ask for a formal vote to challenge the decision. Each Maintainer can cast a maximum of one vote regardless of the number of repositories the maintainer is listed in. A simple majority is required to approve the PR. Only the Maintainers associated with the concerned repository (as documented in maintainers.md) may vote on the PR. For cross-repository issues, the PR can be opened in grpc-community or proposal repositories. In these cross-repository cases, all Maintainers are eligible to vote. The official roster of all Maintainers will be kept up to date in this repo in the contributors/maintainers.md file. The Steering Committee will have write access to these two repositories, but must use the official voting process outlined above for any changes to them.

The gRFC Process

We use gRFCs for any substantial changes to gRPC. This process involves an upfront design that will provide increased visibility to the community. If you're considering a PR that will bring in a new feature across several languages, affect how gRPC is implemented, or may be a breaking change; then you must start with a gRFC. The process is documented in the proposal repository and a template is provided here.

How To Contribute

See the general guidelines here on how to contribute to the gRPC project.

Adding New Repositories

New repositories can be added to gRPC GitHub organization as long as they adhere to the CNCF charter and gRPC governance guidelines. After a project proposal has been announced on a public forum (GitHub issue or mailing list), the existing Maintainers have two weeks to discuss the new project, raise objections and cast their vote. Projects must be approved by a majority vote following the process described above. If a project is approved, a Maintainer will add the project to the gRPC GitHub organization, and make an announcement on a public forum.

Handling Security Vulnerabilities

The process for handling any security vulnerabilities or concerns found in gRPC is described here. This process is known as the gRPC CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure) process.

Releases

Details on gRPC release process and schedule can be found here. Each repository has its own release process. We are in the process of making the release instructions publicly available. Only Maintainers have the right to do releases, but the duty may be delegated.

Changes In Governance

Any change in this document must go through the voting process described above.

Steering Committee

The following responsibilities and powers belong to the Steering Committee:

• Define, evolve, and defend the vision, mission and the values of the project.
• Request funds and other support from the CNCF (e.g. marketing, press, etc.)
• Coordinate with the CNCF regarding usage of the gRPC brand and deciding project scope, core requirements, and conformance, as well as how that brand can be used in relation to other efforts or vendors.

Committee Meetings

The Steering Committee will meet once per quarter, or as needed. Meetings are held online, and are public by default.

Given the private nature of some of these discussions (e.g. privacy, private emails to the committee, code of conduct violations, escalations, disputes between members, security reports, etc.) some meetings may be held in private.

Meeting notes will be made available to members of the grpc-io mailing list. Public meetings will be recorded and the recordings made available publicly.

Committee members

Seats on the Steering Committee are held by an individual, not by their employer.

The current membership of the committee is (listed alphabetically by first name):

Member	Organization
Antoine Tollenaere	Datadog
April Kyle Nassi	Google
Craig Tiller	Google
Jung-Yu (Gina) Yeh	Google
Kevin Nilson	Google
Mark Roth	Google
Nupur Kothari	Google

Decision process

The Steering Committee desires to always reach consensus.

Decisions requiring a vote include: issuing written policy, amending existing written policy, all spending, hiring, and contracting, official responses to the CNCF, or any other decisions that at least two of the members present decide require a vote.

Decisions are made in meetings when a quorum of more than half of the members are present (and all members have been informed of the meeting), and may pass with more than half the members of the committee supporting it.

Getting in touch

There are two ways to raise issues to the steering committee for decision:

1. Emailing the Steering Committee at grpc-steering@googlegroups.com. This is a private discussion list to which all members of the committee have access.
2. Open an issue on grpc/grpc-community and indicate that you would like attention from the steering committee.

Composition

The steering committee has 7 seats. These seats are open to anyone. While anyone may nominate anyone else, the nominee must provide consent and attest their commitment to the responsibilities that the position entails.

Election Procedure

Timeline

Steering Committee elections are held annually and terms are a year in length. Two weeks or more before the election, the Steering Committee will appoint Election Officer(s) (see below). One week or more before the election, the Election Officer(s) will issue a call for nominations. One day before the election, the call for nominations will be closed. The election will be open for voting not less than one week and not more than four. The results of the election will be announced within one week of closing the election. New Steering Committee members will take office on August 15th each year.

Election Officer(s)

Six weeks or more before the election, the Steering Committee will appoint between one and three Election Officer(s) to administer the election. Elections Officers will be community members in good standing who are eligible to vote, are not running for Steering in that election, who are not currently part of the Steering Committee and can make a public promise of impartiality. They will be responsible for:

• Making all announcements associated with the election
• Preparing and distributing electronic ballots
• Assisting candidates in preparing and sharing statements
• Tallying voting results according to the rules in this charter

Eligibility to Vote

gRPC project Maintainers, as defined by the contributor ladder, are eligible to vote. The official list of Maintainers will be kept up to date in this repository in contributors/maintainers.md.

Anyone holding status as a Maintainer at any any point while the voting is open will be able to cast a vote. The Election Officer(s) will make available a voter's guide within this repository.

Voting Procedure

Elections will be held using a time-limited Condorcet ranking using the IRV method. Voters will be able to rank the candidates from most to least preferred, possibly omitting candidates. The top vote-getters will be elected to the open seats. Any ties will be resolved by a revote with losing candidates from the previous round removed.

Vacancies

In the event of a resignation or other loss of an elected 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, unless the regular steering committee election is less than 7 weeks away. Eligible voters from the most recent election will vote in the special election. Eligibility will not be redetermined at the time of the special election. Any replacement steering committee member will serve out the remainder of the term for the person they are replacing, regardless of the length of that remainder.