This is version 0.4 of this document. A later version of this document will be published by Docker for public comment on or April 30. A final draft is expected to be produced in June. All comments, corrections, and suggestions should be sent to governance@docker.com.
The Docker project is experiencing incredible momentum in project growth, adoption, and contribution. As of April 15 2014, there are over 400 contributors, 95% of whom do not work for the project’s commercial sponsor. Large numbers of projects are being built on top of or incorporating Docker, and there is a large and growing community of users. The project was designed from the outset to have a very open structure, including open design, open contribution, and consistent use of tools across the project. Maintainers include both Docker, Inc. and non-Docker Inc. employees. Given the large numbers of contributors, users, and companies with a stake in the future of the project, the project leadership is looking to supplement the current governance and contribution mechanisms with an advisory board, as part of its long term commitment to open governance.
The primary purpose of Docker Governance Advisory Board (DGAB) is to advise the Docker project leadership (Leadership) on matters related to supporting the long term governance, structure, and roadmap of the Docker project. The following main areas are included in this charter:
- Provide a forum for individuals, users, and companies to discuss the issues under the DGAB purview (SCOPE)
- Provide guidance and input to Leadership, and where possible, present a consistent and consolidated opinion from the broader Docker community
- Produce a formal, twice yearly report to the Leadership and broader Docker community of the status of and progress made in all areas under the purview of the DGAB.
- Promote and support the use of Docker in manner consistent with Guiding Principles of the project and the Core Criteria The DGAB is not:
- Intended to serve as a governance board. The DGAB advises, but does not manage, the Docker project leadership
- Intended to replace existing mechanisms for community input, governance, or contribution
- Intended to assume a formal, fiduciary role with respect to the project. The DGAB membership will not be asked to provide funds to the project, assume liabilities with respect to the project or their activities, or assume responsibility for enforcing either trademarks or DGAB recommendations
The DGAB is expected to provide input and formal recommendations regarding the following areas:
- Docker project long term roadmap
- Docker project policies and procedures around maintenance and contributions
- Docker project policies and procedures around intellectual property, trademark, and licensing
- Core Criteria for Docker-related project (c.f. section 7.0)
- Docker project long term governance model
The DGAB will have 15 members
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The Docker Chief Maintainer and architect: Solomon Hykes
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2 seats for the top core maintainers
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Up to 12 additional seats: 4 corporate seats, 4 individual or small business seats, 4 “user” seats
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No fee or sponsorship is required for membership
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The membership term will last 12 months. With the exception of the Chief Maintainer, all members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms
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The selection process is intended to be open, transparent, and guided by objective criteria for membership.
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The BGAB shall elect a Chair and Vice Chair from amongst their members to serve a renewable 6 month term.
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The Chair or Vice-Chair shall prepare an agenda for and preside over regular meetings of the DGAB. These meetings shall occur as frequently as the DGAB determines is in the project’s best interest, but no less than quarterly
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A member of the DGAB may be removed by a resolution of the DGAB supported by more than two thirds of its membership.
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The DGAB may fill any vacancy arising by removal or resignation by a simple majority vote to fill the remainder of the term of the vacating member.
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The rules of election and membership outlined in this section may be varied by a resolution of the DGAB supported by more than two thirds of its voting membership.
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All project maintainers are welcome as participants and observers at DGAB meetings
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Contributors: Four seats will be granted to the top contributors, as measured by non-trivial pull requests merged to master in the last 6 months. Trivial pull requests are typos, minor document corrections, or other items that do not require a DCO.
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Corporate seats: Nomination is restricted to companies for whom all three of the following are true
- Are in the top 8 companies in terms of non-trivial pull requests merged to master in the past six months as measured by contributions by all employees
- Have employees as maintainers and/or make significant contributions to the code base
- Have committed to integrate Docker into widely used products in a manner consistent with Core Criteria. (c.f. section 7.0)
Once nomination has been closed, selection of corporate seats will be made by a vote by eligible contributors. Eligible contributors are those who have had at least one non-trivial pull request merged to master in the past six months.
- User seats: To be nominated, a user must be using Docker in production and have published a use case. Once nomination has been closed, selection will be made by a vote by eligible contributors. Eligible contributors are those who have had at least one non-trivial pull request merged to master in the past six months.
- The DGAB is authorized to seek advice and counsel from other interested parties and invited experts as appropriate
- Any outside party wishing to bring an issue before the DGAB may do so by emailing the DGAB mailing list
- The DGAB shall provide transparent and timely reporting (through any mechanism it deems appropriate) to the Community at large on all of its activities, subject to the right of any individual to designate their comments and the ensuing discussion as "in confidence," in which case the public report shall contain only a note of the request and an agreed summary (if any) of the substance.
- The DGAB is being formed at the discretion of the Leadership. The Leadership alone may decide to terminate the DGAB in its sole discretion; provided however, that the Leadership shall first consult the DGAB Chair.
- The DGAB and its members shall abide by appropriate antitrust guidelines.
The DGAB will formulate recommendations in conjunction with the following, open governance principles
- Open participation: throughout the project,
- anyone should be able to participate and contribute. All bugs and tasks will be tracked in a public tracker and all of the source code and all of the tools needed to build it will be available under an open license permitting unrestricted use
- Open technical meritocracy: technical merit over pride of authorship. Code is contributed for the express purpose of advancing technologies relevant to the project, effectively separating technology advancement from individual or commercial intent.
- Open design: Roadmaps are discussed in the open, and design receives input from all contributors and maintainers
- Influence through contribution: organizations and individuals gain influence over the project through contribution
- IP Cleanliness: Steps are taken to ensure that all incoming code is legally contributed (DCOs terms-of-use etc.), that use of approved third party libraries does not create incompatible dependencies, and that all non-trivial commits have DCOs
- Open Licensing: code should be licensed using approved, standard, open-source licenses. (Docker is currently licensed under Apache 2.0)
The DGAB will formulate a set of Core Criteria for projects and commercial products that use the Docker trademarks
- Core Criteria will generally cover such areas as: use of standard APIs, consistent behaviors expected of Docker containers, trademark guidelines, provenance, upstream contribution models, and alternative distributions
- As Core Criteria will not be fully defined when the initial DGAB membership is formulated, it is understood that there is a possibility that certain members of the initial DGAB may not agree with the Core Criteria when they are fully defined or may have products/offerings that are not in compliance with the Core Criteria at the time they are finalized. In this case, the corporate members will either agree to become compliant within a specified timeframe or else resign their DGAB position.
Read more about the announcement on the Docker blog.
Please help us improve this draft by sending your comments and feedback to governance@docker.com You can submit a nomination for the Docker Governance Advisory Board here. All nominations must be received by May 27th to be considered. Submit a nomination.
Can we add the links on "Submit a nomination" and "submit a nomination" ?