Governance

OSPO Alliance Charter

Introduction

The OSPO Alliance was launched in June 2021 by European non-profit organisations — OW2, Eclipse Foundation, OpenForum Europe, and Foundation for Public Code — and concerned individuals to promote an approach to excellence in open source software management.

The OSPO Alliance aims to bring actionable guidance and solutions to all organisations willing to professionally manage the usage, contribution to and publication of open source software, regardless of their size, revenue model or whether public or private. In particular, it will help organisations make the best out of the inexorable advance of open source software in their information systems and processes. We will facilitate the discovery and implementation of tools and best practices when engaging with open source software.

By professionalizing the management of open source software, the OSPO Alliance will make engaging with open source software less risky and more predictable. It will lower barriers to the adoption of open source and will enable organisations to leverage it to enhance their digital sovereignty.

Organisation

The OSPO Alliance is Not an established legal entity. It is composed of supporting organisations and a group of people working pro-bono to achieve the OSPO Alliance goals. The OSPO Alliance works as an open source project and is based on transparency, openness and meritocracy.

Definitions

  • OSPO: Open Source Program Office, an implementation of the open source governance inside an entity.
  • Founders: the four entities that launched the OSPO Alliance: Eclipse Foundation, Foundation for Public Code, OpenForum Europe and OW2.
  • Supporter: entities who signed the Statement of Support.
  • Sponsor: entities helping the OSPO Alliance by providing resources or financial contributions.
  • Participant: see Roles section.
  • Ambassador: see Roles section.
  • Maintainer: see Roles section.
  • Vice-Chairperson: see Roles section.
  • Chairperson: see Roles section.
  • Initiative: a collaborative activity we started to promote Open Source management practices and share them with the rest of the world.
  • Task Force: an internal group working on a specific topic.
  • Steering Committee: governing body responsible for the strategic decisions of the OSPO Alliance, providing guidance, direction and control. It is composed of the Maintainers of the OSPO Alliance.

Roles

The governance recognises the following roles for people in the OSPO Alliance community:

Participants

  • Join calls
  • Do not have voting rights

Ambassadors

  • Join calls
  • Have voting rights
  • Contribute by recruiting, disseminating and communicating
  • Are Nominated and elected by the Maintainers
  • Can organise formal votes
  • Have an obligation to participate in at least 2/3 (two-thirds) of the formal votes

Maintainers

  • Are also Ambassadors
  • Maintain the infrastructure and tooling, and have privileged access (e.g. merge MRs)
  • Contribute by joining actions regularly, active contributions recognized by fellow Maintainers

Vice-Chairperson

  • Also Maintainer
  • Supports/seconds the Chair in all their roles and steps in to lead when the Chair is unavailable

Chairperson

  • Also Maintainer
  • Elected by the Maintainers on an annual basis
  • Convenes general calls
  • Steps into disputes and ensures respect of the code of conduct and rules

Promotion and demotion rules

Contributors may change role according to the guidelines described below.

Ambassadors

  • Need to be sponsored by a maintainer or ambassador
  • Need to have a public track record of communications
  • Goes through a vote

Maintainers

  • Need to be sponsored by a maintainer
  • Need to have a public track record of contributions on tools
  • Goes through a vote

Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson

  • Must be a maintainer
  • Elected by the maintainers and ambassadors on an annual basis

People lose their role and/or privilege if they don’t comply with the requirements for 6 months.

Promotions and demotions are ultimately validated through the decision process.

The lists of maintainers and ambassadors can be found at the root of our repository, respectively in the MAINTAINERS.md and AMBASSADORS.md files.

The FLOSS-PSO initiative

The FLOSS-PSO initiative aims to identify and list Public Sector Organisations (aka PSO) OSPOs and foster collaboration among these. It provides a website (https://floss-pso.network) for communications, a git repository to store and serve the definition of PSOs, and a dedicated category in the OSPO Alliance forum. The initiative relies on the OSPOMeta schema for OSPOs description, and encourages its users to contribute to the definition. However, OSPOMeta is not under the umbrella of the OSPO Alliance at this time.

The FLOSS-PSO initiative operates under the umbrella of the OSPO Alliance, applies the same code of conduct and open, transparent and meritocratic governance model, and partially uses its infrastructure. Due to its specific nature and audience however, the initiative defines its own set of maintainers, see the MAINTAINERS file. They take responsibility for the initiative’s compliance with the values and ethos of open source, and with the code of conduct of the Alliance.

Decision Process

By default, every decision is taken by consensus.

If a consensus cannot be reached among the participants, even with the participation of the Chairperson as a mediator, a formal vote is required.

A formal vote:

  • must be announced at least 6 days in advance on the mailing-list to give the voters enough time to be informed. Emails with voting content must have a [VOTE] prefix in their subject
  • closing date must be clearly announced
  • wording should be neutral so as not to influence voters to ensure independence
  • is done only after clearly describing the foreseeable effects to give insight into what is expected to happen and what risks we take
  • requires a minimum participation of 50% of the Maintainers to achieve a quorum
  • is done by replying to the mailing-list with a +1/0/-1 answer per option, with an optional comment
  • final tally is made by summing all votes. If the result is positive, the decision is taken in favour of the proposal
  • is validated during the following meeting, closing the vote
  • result is communicated in meeting minutes and recorded in a decision log file

Competition and Antitrust

Please agree to the following competition and anti-trust guidelines.

We affirm our commitment to comply with all applicable competition and antitrust laws. this section establishes the guidelines that all participants must follow to promote fair and lawful business practices during meetings and interactions. It applies to any participants involved in OSPO Alliance meetings, collaborations, or other business interactions.

Guidelines

Participants are required to adhere to the following principles at all times:

  • No Price-Fixing: Participants shall not engage in any discussion or agreement to set, maintain, or fix prices for products or services.
  • No Market or Customer Allocation: Any arrangement or understanding to divide or allocate markets or customers among competitors is strictly prohibited.
  • No Output Restrictions: Participants must refrain from any agreements or practices that impose limits on production or the provision of services.
  • No Exchange of Competitively Sensitive Information: Participants shall not agree to or engage in the exchange of business information that is competitively sensitive or could impact competitive dynamics.

Compliance and Enforcement

  • Mandatory Compliance: By participating in meetings or related interactions, each participant acknowledges and agrees to abide by these guidelines.
  • Consequences of Non-Compliance: Failure to adhere to this Policy may result in disciplinary action, including removal from meetings or other collaborative forums. Moreover, such violations may expose individuals to significant legal consequences under competition law.
  • Right to Exclude: Should any participant fail to agree to or comply with these guidelines, the OSPO Alliance maintainers reserves the right to exclude such individuals from meetings or collaborative sessions.

IP and trademark policy

Trademarks

The “OSPO Alliance” name, logos and branding design are the property of the OSPO Alliance. All the remaining names, trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Intellectual Property & Licence

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all content is copyrighted by the “OSPO Alliance and others” and published under the CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, as it allows wide dissemination. Please refer to the licence legal text.

As with any open source project, contributors shall make sure they comply with the Developer Certificate of Origin manifest. Please note however that, based on the good faith of participants, we do not enforce it in our repositories.

New version of this document

This document is published under the CC-BY-4.0 licence. In order to avoid any inconsistency, all modifications to this charter have to go through a formal vote as defined by the decision process in order to be enforced in the OSPO Alliance community.

See the following related documents: