Knative steering committee

The Knative Steering Committee (KSC) is the ultimate authority for the Knative project, and governs all aspects of the project.

The governance of Knative is an open, living document, and will continue to evolve as the community and project change. We expect over time we will adapt the way we run this committee, based on feedback from the community.

Charter

  1. Define, evolve, and promote the vision, values, mission, and scope of the project.
  2. Define and evolve project governance structures and policies, including project roles and how collaborators become members, approvers, leads, and/or administrators. This includes policy for the creation and administration of working groups and committees.
  3. Steward, control access, delegate access, and establishes processes regarding, all Knative project resources and has the final say in the disposition of those resources.
  4. Manage the Knative brand and decide which things can be called “Knative” and how that mark can be used in relation to other efforts or vendors.
  5. Confirm/reject nominations to the KSC from organizations who are allocated seats.
  6. Confirm/reject nominations to the Technical Oversight Committee.
  7. Receive and handle reports about code of conduct violations and maintain confidentiality.
  8. Receive security reports; work with the appropriate technical leads to accept or reject the report; maintain the private nature of such reports until disclosed to the broader community.
  9. Act as the final escalation point and decider for any disputes, issues, clarifications, or escalations within the project scope.

Delegated authority

KSC may choose to delegate its authority to other committees as-needed. The committee currently recognizes this delegated authority for:

Committee Meetings

KSC meets every two weeks, or as-needed. Meetings are held online.

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

Meeting notes are available to members of the knative-dev mailing list (link to be added).

Questions and proposals for changes to governance are posted as issues in the docs repo, and the KSC invites your feedback there. See Getting in touch for other options.

Committee members

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

The committee was created as the project was in its infancy, in order to tackle governance and overall project strategy. Because of the nature of the project and funding required, it was decided that strong corporate leadership was necessary for the project to ensure velocity. As the project grows and matures the KSC will, from time to time, consider if this policy should be changed.

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

  Member Organization Profile
Alex Nicolaou Google @anicolao
April Kyle Nassi Google @thisisnotapril
Brenda Chan VMware @bsnchan
Michael Behrendt IBM @mbehrendt
Paul Morie Red Hat @pmorie
Ron Avnur Google @ronavn
Open * Google

* Open seats have been allocated to the organization per the committee rules, but have not been assigned to a member of the organization.

Allocation of seats

Seats on the steering committee are allocated based upon contribution to the project by an organization. No final decision has been made on the exact formula.

As the project continues to grow, we expect to add additional seats to the committee, ensuring that those contributing to the project are properly represented.

  • After a seat is allocated to an organization, the organization shall nominate a candidate to be confirmed by KSC. The committee reserves the right to not confirm a candidate, in which the organization would need to nominate a new candidate
  • Members of the committee may step down at any time. When a member steps down, their organization shall nominate a new candidate.
  • If a member leaves their organization, the organization must nominate a new committee member to replace them following the nomination and confirmation process.
  • If an organization is unable to seat a candidate, the KSC reserves the right to reallocate the seat to another organization.
  • Changes to the number of seats, which company seats are allocated to, and nominations to the committee are confirmed by majority vote of the committee members.
  • In situations where the organization which holds a seat is no longer a viable entity (e.g. merger, dissolution, bankruptcy) the KSC will make a decision on how to reallocate that seat. Seats do not automatically transfer to any organization.
  • Members on the committee have a 1 year term from their confirmation, and may be reconfirmed to the committee at the end of their term.

Decision process

The steering committee desires to always reach consensus.

Decisions are made in meetings when a quorum of the members are present and may pass with majority of the committee supporting it.

Quorum is considered reached when at least half of the members are present.

In case of extended absence, the organization of the absent member may appoint a single delegate from the same company during the absence.

Changes to the charter

Changes to the KSC charter may be proposed via a Pull Request on the charter itself. Amendments are accepted with majority consent of the committee.

Proposals and amendments to the charter are available for at least a period of one week for comments and questions before a vote will occur.

Raising issues to the steering committee

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

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

Portions of this document are adapted from the Istio Steering Committee documentation, which is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.