TSC and committer election process

Owned by Roman Shaposhnik
Last updated: Mar 14, 2023
3 min read

Since EVE community mostly borrows government policies from the Apache Software Foundation, our election process is no exception. The ASF documentation is really worth a read, but since it covers a much more diverse set of projects than what EVE is, the salient points are summarized below.

We love to see contributors showing commitment. Projects invite committed participants to become committers and help shape the future of a project.

EVE is a meritocracy. Once someone has shown sufficient sustained commitment to a project by helping out and contributing work to it (and to LF-Edge), the project may vote to invite that person to become a committer. Since committers get access and PR merge GitHub karma on all of the repositories of the EVE Project (EVE, Eden, Adam, edge-containers, runx, rol and eve-tools) it is expected that they are mature enough to know when to ask for help when dealing with PRs that go outside of their area of immediate expertise.

How does one show commitment? Simple! Any activity that has been identified in the description of the Committer role counts. For example, get involved and contribute via the user and developer email lists, Wiki and forums (if any); extend or improve the documentation; work on bugs listed in the issue tracker or submit code patches. Answering other users' questions is a great way to get started, as is suggesting patches or improvements to the LF-Edge EVE website. Note that becoming a committer is not just about submitting some patches; it's also about helping out on the development and user discussion lists, helping with documentation and the issue tracker, and showing long-term interest.

To put it another way, the way to become a committer is to start behaving as though you are one already (since none of these activities – except being able to merge PRs) require any kind of infrastructure karma assigned to you upfront. If you have demonstrated the behaviour long enough, you should expect one of the TSC members to notice and reach out with an offer to be nominated as a committer on the project. However, if for whatever reason (mostly because TSC members are humans too – and they make mistakes and oversights!) this doesn't happen – there's absolutely no problem with gently reaching out to individual TSC members (or even the TSC mailing list) and politely asking whether the amount of contribution you provided so far would qualify you for a committership.

If you accept this nomination, then the next step is for one of the TSC member to initiate a discussion on a TSC private mailing list about your nomination. The letter should cite all the references in support of the thesis that a given individual has really contributed quite a bit to the project and has demonstrated as much of the behaviour outlined in the Committer role  as possible (obviously you don't have to hit all the bullet points – but the more the better).

A discussion on the TSC private mailing list will conclude with a formal vote (simple majority with vetoes allowed but frowned upon) and then the invitation to an individual for a commitership role will be sent out by the same TSC member who nominated the person.

Or to summarize the process:

  1. Individuals who would like to be considered committers on the project are expected to show as much of the behaviour outlined in the Committer role as possible

  2. Existing TSC members diligently monitor all the contributors and identify those who can be considered to be granted a committer role (or you can self-identify by reaching out to the individual TSC members and/or TSC mailing list)

  3. Nominating TSC member prepares a case for an individual to be considered a committer and sends it to the TSC private mailing list

  4. After discussion of the nominee has concluded a nominating TSC member starts a formal vote (simple majority with vetoes allowed but frowned upon)

  5. If the vote passes a nominating TSC member sends an invite to the individual and upon acceptance works with the LF Edge Infrastructure team to provision GitHub karma to the individual. Also MAINTAINERS.md file gets updated.

  6. If the vote fails, whatever feedback is appropriate and legal, can be communicated back to the nominee to make sure they understand how to improve their chances of getting nominated again

Finally, while the above process discussed Committers election process, the TSC election process is exactly the same with the only two points of difference being that the expected behaviour is outlined in the TSC Member role and the file that gets updated is CONTRIBUTING.md.