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+# Continuous integration and authorization for OpenBMC
+
+Author:
+  Brad Bishop !radsquirrel
+Primary assignee:
+  Brad Bishop !radsquirrel
+Other contributors:
+  None
+Created:
+  2019-01-30
+
+## Problem Description
+The OpenBMC project maintains a number of Jenkins CI jobs to ensure incoming
+contributions to the project source code meet a level of quality.  Incoming
+contributions can be made by the general public - anyone with a GitHub account.
+However unlikely, it is possible for a bad actor to make code submissions that
+attempt to compromise project resources, e.g. build systems, and as such some
+amount of authorization of contributors must occur to provide some level of
+protection from potential bad actors.
+
+
+The project already has contributor authorization for CI.  This proposal serves
+to describe the drawbacks of the current solution and propose an alternative
+that addresses those drawbacks.
+
+## Background and References
+The current authorization solution checks the user for membership in the
+openbmc/general-developers GitHub team.  If the contributor is a member of the
+team (or a general-developers sub-team), the automated CI processes are
+triggered without any human intervention.  If the contributor is not a member of
+the general-developers team, manual intervention (ok-to-test) is required by a
+project maintainer to trigger the automated CI processes.
+
+
+Additonal reading:
+https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
+https://jenkins.io/
+https://help.github.com/articles/about-organizations/
+
+## Requirements
+The existing method for authorization has a singular problem - the GitHub
+organization owner role.  In order for contributors to be added to the
+openbmc/general-developers GitHub team, the contributor must first be a member
+of the openbmc GitHub organization.  Only organization owners can invite GitHub
+users to become members of an organization.  Organization owners have
+unrestricted access to all aspects of the project - it would be unwise to bestow
+organization ownership for the sole purpose of enabling
+openbmc/general-developers group membership administrative capability.
+
+
+An alternative authorization method for CI should:
+ - Not require the GitHub organization owner role to administer the list of
+   users authorized for CI.
+ - Enable a hierarchical trust model for user authorization (groups nested
+   within groups).
+
+## Proposed Design
+The proposal is to simply migrate the current openbmc/general-developers GitHub
+team, and all subordinate teams, to Gerrit groups:
+
+group: `openbmc/ci-authorized`
+
+group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
+
+group: `abccorp/ci-authorized`
+
+The openbmc/ci-authorized group can contain users that are not associated with
+any specific organization, as well as organizational groups:
+
+group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` contains ->
+
+  group `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
+
+  group `abccorp/ci-authorized`
+
+  user `nancy`
+
+  user `joe`
+
+This proposal also specifies a convention for administration of organizational
+groups:
+
+group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
+
+group: `abccorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `abccorp/ci-authorized`
+
+group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` administers -> `openbmc/ci-authorized`
+
+Finally, any Jenkins CI jobs must be updated to test for membership of the
+Gerrit group instead of the GitHub team.
+
+New organizational groups (and associated owner groups) will be created when a
+CCLA is signed and accepted by the project.
+
+## Alternatives Considered
+Assigning GitHub organization owner roles to organizational group administrators
+was considered but is a major violation of the least-privilege-required
+principle.
+
+## Impacts
+GitHub has vastly superior load balancing and backup capability so there is a
+potential for decreased service availability and data loss.
+
+## Testing
+Deploy on a live production server 😀