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- <header>
- <h2>OpenSSL Bylaws</h2>
- <h5>
- First issued 13th February 2017<br/>
- Last modified 20th December 2017
- </h5>
- </header>
-
- <div class="entry-content">
-
- <p>This document defines the bylaws under which the OpenSSL Project
- operates. It defines the different project roles, how they contribute
- to the project, and how project decisions are made.</p>
-
- <h2>Roles and Responsibilities</h2>
-
- <h3>Users</h3>
-
- <p>Users include any individual or organisation that downloads,
- installs, compiles, or uses the OpenSSL command line applications or
- the OpenSSL libraries or the OpenSSL documentation. This includes
- OpenSSL-based derivatives such as patched versions of OpenSSL provided
- through OS distributions, often known as "downstream" versions.</p>
-
- <p>Users may request help and assistance from the project through any
- appropriate forum as designated by the OpenSSL Management Committee
- (OMC). Users may also report bugs, issues, or feature requests; or
- make pull requests through any OMC designated channel.</p>
-
- <h3><a name="committers">Committers</a></h3>
-
- <p>Committers have the ability to make new commits to the main OpenSSL
- Project repository. Collectively, they have the responsibility for
- maintaining the contents of that repository. They must ensure that any
- committed contributions are consistent with all appropriate OpenSSL
- policies and procedures as defined by the OMC.</p>
-
- <p>Committers also have a responsibility to review code submissions in
- accordance with OpenSSL project policies and procedures.</p>
-
- <p>Commit access is granted as a result of a vote by the OMC. It may
- be withdrawn at any time by a vote of the OMC.</p>
-
- <p>A condition of commit access is that the committer has signed an
- Individual Contributor Licence Agreement (ICLA). If contributions may
- also be from the employer of an individual with commit access then a
- Corporate Contributor Licence Agreement (CCLA) must also be signed and
- include the name of the committer.</p>
-
- <p>In order to retain commit access a committer must have authored or
- reviewed at least one commit within the previous two calendar
- quarters. This will be checked at the beginning of each calendar
- quarter. This rule does not apply if the committer first received
- their commit access during the previous calendar quarter.</p>
-
- <h3><a name="OMC">OpenSSL Management Committee (OMC)</a></h3>
-
- <p>The OMC represents the official voice of the project. All official
- OMC decisions are taken on the basis of a vote.</p>
-
- <p>The OMC:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>makes all decisions regarding management and strategic direction
- of the project;</li>
- <li>sets and maintains all policies and procedures;</li>
- <li>nominates, elects and removes committers and OMC members as
- required;</li>
- <li>ensures security issues are dealt with in an appropriate
- manner;</li>
- <li>schedules releases and determines future release plans and the
- development roadmap and priorities;</li>
- <li>maintains all other repositories according to the policies and
- procedures they define.</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>Membership of the OMC is by invitation only from the existing OMC
- following a passing vote. OMC members may or may not be committers as
- well. If an OMC member is also a committer then all rules that apply
- to committers still apply.</p>
-
- <p>The OMC makes decisions on behalf of the project. In order to have
- a valid voice on the OMC, members must be actively contributing to the
- project. Note that there are many ways to contribute to the project
- but the ones that count in order to participate in the OMC
- decision-making process are the ones listed below.</p>
-
- <p>OMC members may become inactive. In order to remain active a member
- must, in any calendar quarter, contribute by:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>a) Having authored, or been recorded as a reviewer of, at least
- one commit made to any OpenSSL repository (including non-code based
- ones) and</li>
- <li>b) vote in at least two-thirds of the total votes closed in the
- first two months of the quarter and the last month of the preceding
- quarter.</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>The above rules will be applied at the beginning of each calender
- quarter. It does not apply if the OMC member was first appointed, or
- became active again during the previous calendar quarter. The voting
- requirement only includes those votes after the time the member joined
- or was made active again.</p>
-
- <p>If an OMC member remains inactive for one calendar quarter then
- they will no longer be considered an OMC member, but will be listed as
- an OMC Alumni. OMC Alumni have no access to OMC internal resources
- (including email lists) but may request a vote at any time to
- reinstate their membership in the OMC.</p>
-
- <p>Any OMC member can propose a vote to declare another member
- inactive or remove them from OMC membership entirely.</p>
-
- <p>An OMC member can declare themselves inactive, leave the OMC, or
- leave the project entirely. This does not require a vote.</p>
-
- <p>An inactive OMC member can propose a vote that the OMC declare them
- active again. Inactive OMC members cannot vote but can propose issues
- to vote on and participate in discussions. They retain access to OMC
- internal resources.</p>
-
- <h3>OpenSSL Software Foundation (OSF)</h3>
-
- <p>The OpenSSL Software Foundation represents the OpenSSL project in
- legal and most official formal capacities in relation to external
- entities and individuals. This includes, but is not limited to,
- managing contributor license agreements, managing donations,
- registering and holding trademarks, registering and holding domain
- names, obtaining external legal advice, and so on.</p>
-
- <p>Any OMC member may serve as a director of OSF if they wish. To do
- so they should send a request to any existing OSF director.</p>
-
- <h3>OpenSSL Software Services (OSS)</h3>
-
- <p>OpenSSL Software Services represents the OpenSSL project for most
- commercial and quasi-commercial contexts, such as providing formal
- support contracts and brokering consulting contracts for OpenSSL
- committers.</p>
-
- <p>Any OMC member may serve as a director of OSS if they wish, subject
- to certain contractual requirements. To do so they should send a
- request to any existing OSS director.</p>
-
- <h2>OMC Voting Procedures</h2>
-
- <p>A vote to change these bylaws will pass if it obtains an in favour
- vote by more than two thirds of the active OMC members and less than
- one quarter votes against by the active OMC members. A vote that does
- not change these bylaws will pass if it has had a vote registered from
- a majority of active OMC members and has had more votes registered in
- favour than votes registered against.</p>
-
- <p>Only active OMC members may vote. A registered vote is a vote in
- favour, a vote against, or an abstention.</p>
-
- <p>Any OMC member (active or inactive) can propose a vote. OMC Alumni
- may only propose a vote to reinstate themselves to the OMC. Each vote
- must include a closing date which must be between seven and fourteen
- calendar days after the start of the vote. Votes to change these
- bylaws must be fourteen calendar days in duration.</p>
-
- <p>In exceptional cases, the closing date for non-bylaw changing votes
- could be less than seven calendar days; for example, a critical issue
- that needs rapid action. A critical issue is hard to define precisely
- but would include cases where a security fix is needed and the details
- will soon be made public. At least one other active OMC member besides
- the proposer needs to agree to the shorter timescale.</p>
-
- <p>A vote closes on its specified date. In addition, any active OMC
- member can declare a vote closed once the number of uncast votes could
- not affect the outcome. Any active OMC member may change their vote up
- until the vote is closed. No vote already cast can be changed after
- the vote is closed. Votes may continue to be cast and recorded after a
- vote is closed up until fourteen days after the start of the vote.
- These votes will count for the purposes of determining OMC member
- activity, but will otherwise not affect the outcome of the vote.</p>
-
- <p>All votes and their outcomes should be recorded and available to
- all OMC members.</p>
-
- <h2>Leave of absence</h2>
-
- <p>An active OMC member or committer may request a leave of absence
- from the project. A leave of absence from the OMC or committer shall
- suspend inactivity determination for the specified role. All access to
- OMC or committer resources shall be suspended (disabled) and the OMC
- member shall be excluded from voting and the committer shall be excluded
- from reviewing or approving source changes. On return from a leave of
- absence, the OMC member or committer will be deemed to have become active
- as of the date of return.</p>
-
- <p>All of the following criteria must be met in order to qualify as a
- leave of absence:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>a) the member must request via email to the OMC a leave of
- absence at least one week in advance of the requested
- period of leave;</li>
- <li>b) only one leave of absence is permitted per calendar year;</li>
- <li>c) the leave of absence must specify the date of return from
- the leave of absence; </li>
- <li>d) the length of the leave of absence shall be a minimum of one calendar
- month and shall not exceed three calendar months (one quarter); and </li>
- <li>e) the leave of absence applies to all the roles within the
- project (i.e. both OMC and committer if both roles apply).</li>
- </ul>
-
- <h2><a name="update">Bylaws Update History</a> <a href="#toc"><img src="/img/up.gif"/></a></h2>
- <p>
- The following changes have been made since the bylaws were first
- issued 13-February-2017.
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>20-December-2017.
- Added <i>Leave of absence</i> section.</li>
- </ul>
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