1# TOF Membership and Voting 2 3## Technical Oversight Forum 4 5### Members 6 7The TOF body shall consist of between 5 and 9 members selected by the OpenBMC 8Development Community by vote. The current number of members is **7** and this 9shall only be changed, prior to a TOF election, by a unanimous decision at a 10regular meeting of the current TOF body. 11 12TOF members must themselves be members of the OpenBMC Development Community. 13This is determined by voting eligibility; ie. an individual is only eligible to 14be elected a member of the TOF if they are eligible to vote in their own 15election. 16 17To encourage a diverse viewpoint, no more than 2 TOF members may be employed by, 18or working under a contract relationship for, the same entity unless (one of): 19 20- The entity is the Linux Foundation. 21- The TOF members have been unopposed in an election. 22 23### Terms and Elections 24 25Members are elected by Ranked Choice Voting of the OpenBMC Development Community 26at twice yearly elections. Members of the TOF typically serve a 1 year term 27before their seat is up for re-election; members have no term limits. 28 29To facilitate continuity of the TOF body, these elections are held every 6 30months in which half (+/- 1) of the seats are re-elected. Due to additions or 31subtractions in seats and membership resignations, more than half (+1) of the 32seats may need to be filled in a single election. Prior to the election the 33current TOF may determine a certain number of seats will be 6 month terms, to 34return the number of seats per election to a more equal number, and these seats 35will be given to the individuals with the later results in the RCV. 36 37Elections are to begin on March 1st and September 1st at 00:00 UTC and conclude 38seven days later. Election schedule is as follows: 39 40| Q1 Elections | Q3 Elections | Action on or by 00:00 UTC. | 41| :----------: | :----------: | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 42| Jan 1st | July 1st | Developer contributions close for OpenBMC Development Community membership eligibility (See “Metrics”). | 43| Jan 15th | July 15th | Current TOF must publish a list of eligible voting members. | 44| Jan 30th | July 30th | Nominations (self or peer) for TOF seats must be sent to the mailing list. | 45| Jan 30th | July 30th | Developers disputing membership eligibility must submit a petition request to the current TOF. | 46| Feb 15th | Aug 15th | Current TOF must publish a final list of eligible voting members and upcoming candidates for TOF seats. | 47| March 1st | Sept 1st | Election begins. | 48| March 7th | Sept 7th | Election concludes. | 49| March 15th | Sept 15th | Current TOF publishes election results and updates the TOF membership document with new members and terms. | 50| Apr 1st | Oct 1st | TOF member terms conclude / begin. | 51 52This document shall be maintained with a list of current members and their term 53end (sorted by term conclusion followed by alphabetically by preferred name): 54 55| Name | Term Conclusion | 56| :----------------- | :-------------: | 57| Andrew Geissler | 2024-10-01 | 58| Ed Tanous | 2024-10-01 | 59| Zev Weiss | 2024-10-01 | 60| Andrew Jeffery | 2025-04-01 | 61| Jason Bills | 2025-04-01 | 62| Patrick Williams | 2025-04-01 | 63| William Kennington | 2025-04-01 | 64 65## OpenBMC Development Community 66 67Membership in the OpenBMC development community is determined by development 68contributions to the project. By contributing to the project, developers gain a 69voice in the technical direction of the project by shaping the membership in the 70TOF. 71 72Membership is determined using data from the previous 6 months of development 73contributions. Using this data, the TOF will publish a list of Active Members of 74the two tiers. An individual who was an Active Member of a tier in the preceding 756 months, but does not qualify in the most recent 6 months, will be listed as an 76Member Emeritus for 6 months. Both Active and Emertius members are eligible for 77elections. 78 79There are two tiers of membership in the development community: normal and 80highly-productive. It is the responsibility of the TOF to set metrics for 81determining community and tier membership. The normal membership tier is 82expected to maintain a low-bar to encourage a diverse and vibrant membership, 83while the highly-productive membership tier is expected to represent between 8412.5% (1/8) and 20% (1/5) of the community. (Whenever the highly-productive tier 85has representation outside of this percentage, the TOF should adjust the 86determining metrics for the next election / membership cycle.) In any election 87cycle, normal developers are given a vote weight of 1 and highly-productive 88developers are given a vote weight of 3. 89 90Any individual who feels their contributions to the project were not recognized 91by the existing metrics may petition the TOF for inclusion in either tier and 92the TOF will make a determination. Examples of these types of contributions 93might be: development in upstream Open Source communities not directly 94controlled by OpenBMC, but for features leveraged by the OpenBMC codebase, and 95significant support activities in areas not covered by existing metrics such as 96Wikis and Discord. 97 98Currently, work on the following projects requires an explicit petition for 99recognition of ToF membership eligibility: 100 101- Linux 102- u-boot 103- QEMU 104- bitbake 105- open-embedded 106- Poky 107 108### Metrics 109 110Determination of membership in the community is made by a point system for 111activities. 112 113- Development of a non-trivial commit (10+ lines) - 3 points. 114- Non-trivial code review (3 or more code suggestions) - 1 point. 115 116The TOF may decide to exempt commits which are only machine configuration or 117sub-sections of a repository only intended for use by one entity. For example 118repositories named `company-ipmi-oem-provider`, subdirectories named 119`oem/company`, Yocto recipes in `meta-company`, and entity-manager configuration 120might all be exempted. Any such exemptions should be applied consistently to all 121members. 122 123Points required for Active membership (in the preceding 6 months): 124 125- Normal - 15 points. 126- Highly-Productive - 80 points. 127