tof: contract: introducing the TOF
Change-Id: Ia82126ef4be51ada4e1b61321f02fa405d26857f
Signed-off-by: Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com>
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+# OpenBMC Technical Oversight Forum (TOF)
+This is a working document and subject to change.
+
+The OpenBMC TOF or Technical Oversight Forum represents the technical
+leadership of the OpenBMC project.
+
+The TOF handles the processes around accepting new features into OpenBMC,
+creating new subprojects (git repositories), approving subproject maintainers,
+handling and enforcement of subproject maintainer issues, and many other
+technical leadership concerns related to OpenBMC. This source of this document
+is in the OpenBMC documentation repository (https://github.com/openbmc/docs).
+The TOF updates and maintains this document, using the process documented
+within, and it can be considered authoritative unless directly overridden by
+the TSC.
+
+## Working Principles
+- Decision making is a spectrum between building broad consensus, in which
+ everyone has agreement, and providing guidance quickly, even when there are
+ strongly differing view-points. This group should intend to work towards
+ broad consensus, with a balance towards moving forward when there is minor
+ disagreement.
+- Members within this forum are representatives of the development community as
+ a whole and not as representatives for the entities they are employed by. As
+ such, decisions should be made based on merits of the decision at hand and
+ not on impacts to various member entities.
+- Encouraging progress, experimentation, and decision making within the project
+ is the core purpose of the TOF and not to create processes and barriers to
+ development. Velocity should be favored over perfection, except as a
+ rationale for ignoring well-reasoned issues.
+
+## Role and responsibilities
+Issues the TOF handle include:
+- Approval of new bitbake meta layers.
+- Approval of new subprojects.
+- Supervising subproject maintainers.
+- Resolving subproject maintainer disputes.
+- Guidance and oversight of the technical direction of OpenBMC.
+
+## Current members
+- Brad Bishop - radsquirrel
+- Andrei Kartashev - Alatar
+- Deepak Kodihalli - dkodihal
+- Ed Tanous - edtanous
+- Richard Thomaiyar - rthomaiy
+- Patrick Williams - stwcx
+- Lei Yu - LeiYU
+
+The TOF shall have a minimum of 5 and maximum of 9 members at any given time.
+
+The chair rotates month to month.
+
+Chair responsibilities:
+- Preparing the agenda.
+- Taking meeting minutes.
+- Documenting decisions on GitHub.
+
+Members are elected by community contributors yearly. The voting process will
+be determined by the TOF at a later date and updated in this document. TOF
+candidates should have a breadth of knowledge about the OpenBMC project. Ideal
+candidates will also have a public history of fostering collaboration between
+teams.
+
+Resignation of TOF members will be handled as an empty/reduced seat until the
+next voting session.
+
+## Github issues
+The TOF tracks any ongoing decisions using GitHub issues (link to repo goes
+here). Issues can be opened by anyone, including TOF members themselves. Issues
+can be requests for process or technical changes, or solicitations for the
+opinion of the TOF. When an issue is opened the TOF will respond to a proposal
+or a solicitation, or add it to the next TOF meeting agenda for TOF discussion.
+
+Once an issue has a proposal, TOF members have 8 days to vote on the proposal
+in one of three ways: for, against, or “needs discussion”*. After 8 days, if
+the proposal has at least three votes for and no other votes, the proposal is
+approved. Alternatively, if the proposal has at least three votes against and
+no other votes, the proposal is rejected and closed. Any other vote count
+results in the issue being put on the next TOF meeting agenda. To ensure
+proposals do not stagnate, if the initial 8 days elapses and the minimum number
+of votes has not been met, the proposal is extended by an additional 6 days and
+then put onto the next TOF meeting agenda after 2 weeks.
+
+Issue vote indicators by reacting to the top post:
+ - For - 👍 (`:+1:`)
+ - Against - 👎 (`:-1:`)
+ - Needs discussion - 👀 (`:eyes:`)
+
+## Meetings
+The TOF meets bi-weekly. Any requests for consideration by the TOF should be
+submitted via a GitHub issue using the process documented earlier in this
+document.
+
+Meetings require a quorum of the TOF to be present; quorum is defined as:
+
+| Active TOF membership | Quorum |
+| --- | --- |
+| 5 | 4 |
+| 6 | 5 |
+| 7 | 5 |
+| 8 | 5 |
+| 9 | 6 |
+
+During the meeting, the TOF discusses proposals under dispute and votes on
+them. A proposal is rejected if it does not reach majority approval or there is
+more than one dissenting vote.
+
+It is the responsibility of the TOF chairperson to make a public record of the
+decisions of the meeting.
+
+## Discord channel
+The TOF has a private Discord channel for forum member coordination and, in
+rare situations, potentially sensitive topics. Sensitive topics would be
+topics having security or privacy concerns, such as those involving actions of
+an individual developer. The TOF chairperson is responsible for coordinating
+the public posting of any information or decisions that do not need to remain
+private, using the same process as public issues.