1# OpenBMC Technical Oversight Forum (TOF) 2This is a working document and subject to change. 3 4The OpenBMC TOF or Technical Oversight Forum represents the technical 5leadership of the OpenBMC project. 6 7The TOF handles the processes around accepting new features into OpenBMC, 8creating new subprojects (git repositories), approving subproject maintainers, 9handling and enforcement of subproject maintainer issues, and many other 10technical leadership concerns related to OpenBMC. This source of this document 11is in the OpenBMC documentation repository (https://github.com/openbmc/docs). 12The TOF updates and maintains this document, using the process documented 13within, and it can be considered authoritative unless directly overridden by 14the TSC. 15 16## Working Principles 17- Decision making is a spectrum between building broad consensus, in which 18 everyone has agreement, and providing guidance quickly, even when there are 19 strongly differing view-points. This group should intend to work towards 20 broad consensus, with a balance towards moving forward when there is minor 21 disagreement. 22- Members within this forum are representatives of the development community as 23 a whole and not as representatives for the entities they are employed by. As 24 such, decisions should be made based on merits of the decision at hand and 25 not on impacts to various member entities. 26- Encouraging progress, experimentation, and decision making within the project 27 is the core purpose of the TOF and not to create processes and barriers to 28 development. Velocity should be favored over perfection, except as a 29 rationale for ignoring well-reasoned issues. 30 31## Role and responsibilities 32Issues the TOF handle include: 33- Approval of new bitbake meta layers. 34- Approval of new subprojects. 35- Supervising subproject maintainers. 36- Resolving subproject maintainer disputes. 37- Guidance and oversight of the technical direction of OpenBMC. 38 39## Current members 40- Brad Bishop - radsquirrel 41- Andrei Kartashev - Alatar 42- Deepak Kodihalli - dkodihal 43- Ed Tanous - edtanous 44- Richard Thomaiyar - rthomaiy 45- Patrick Williams - stwcx 46- Lei Yu - LeiYU 47 48The TOF shall have a minimum of 5 and maximum of 9 members at any given time. 49 50The chair rotates month to month. 51 52Chair responsibilities: 53- Preparing the agenda. 54- Taking meeting minutes. 55- Documenting decisions on GitHub. 56 57Members are elected by community contributors yearly. The voting process will 58be determined by the TOF at a later date and updated in this document. TOF 59candidates should have a breadth of knowledge about the OpenBMC project. Ideal 60candidates will also have a public history of fostering collaboration between 61teams. 62 63Resignation of TOF members will be handled as an empty/reduced seat until the 64next voting session. 65 66## Github issues 67The TOF tracks any ongoing decisions using GitHub issues (link to repo goes 68here). Issues can be opened by anyone, including TOF members themselves. Issues 69can be requests for process or technical changes, or solicitations for the 70opinion of the TOF. When an issue is opened the TOF will respond to a proposal 71or a solicitation, or add it to the next TOF meeting agenda for TOF discussion. 72 73Once an issue has a proposal, TOF members have 8 days to vote on the proposal 74in one of three ways: for, against, or “needs discussion”*. After 8 days, if 75the proposal has at least three votes for and no other votes, the proposal is 76approved. Alternatively, if the proposal has at least three votes against and 77no other votes, the proposal is rejected and closed. Any other vote count 78results in the issue being put on the next TOF meeting agenda. To ensure 79proposals do not stagnate, if the initial 8 days elapses and the minimum number 80of votes has not been met, the proposal is extended by an additional 6 days and 81then put onto the next TOF meeting agenda after 2 weeks. 82 83Issue vote indicators by reacting to the top post: 84 - For - �� (`:+1:`) 85 - Against - �� (`:-1:`) 86 - Needs discussion - �� (`:eyes:`) 87 88## Meetings 89The TOF meets bi-weekly. Any requests for consideration by the TOF should be 90submitted via a GitHub issue using the process documented earlier in this 91document. 92 93Meetings require a quorum of the TOF to be present; quorum is defined as: 94 95| Active TOF membership | Quorum | 96| --- | --- | 97| 5 | 4 | 98| 6 | 5 | 99| 7 | 5 | 100| 8 | 5 | 101| 9 | 6 | 102 103During the meeting, the TOF discusses proposals under dispute and votes on 104them. A proposal is rejected if it does not reach majority approval or there is 105more than one dissenting vote. 106 107It is the responsibility of the TOF chairperson to make a public record of the 108decisions of the meeting. 109 110## Discord channel 111The TOF has a private Discord channel for forum member coordination and, in 112rare situations, potentially sensitive topics. Sensitive topics would be 113topics having security or privacy concerns, such as those involving actions of 114an individual developer. The TOF chairperson is responsible for coordinating 115the public posting of any information or decisions that do not need to remain 116private, using the same process as public issues. 117