Knative Steering Committee election process

Guiding Principles

  • The SC seat should be earned by individuals and not company participation
  • Members of the SC should be exemplary members of the community who have demonstrated our community values
  • The SC should be made up of individuals from different working groups and vendors so that we have a diverse group of thought and input

Composition

The SC will have five seats with a 2 year term, with a maximum of 2 seats being held by employees from the same vendor.

There will be an annual election to determine the composition of the SC for the following year. Two seats will be up for election in one year and three will be up for election the following year.

Candidate Eligibility

Community members must be eligible to vote in order to stand for election (this includes voters who qualify for an exception). Candidates may self-nominate or be nominated by another eligible member. There are no term limits for KSC members. Nothing prevents a qualified member from serving on both the TOC and SC simultaneously.

To run for a Contributing seat, a candidate must additionally be at least a project Member as defined in ROLES.

End-user seats are planned to enable employees of organizations which use but do not sell Knative-derived products. The mechanics of eligibility for end-user seats are still in progress; it is expected that end-user seats will add to the current Steering options to specific include end-user perspectives in the decision-making process.

Voter Eligibility

Anyone who has at least 50 contributions in the last 12 months is eligible to vote in the TOC election. Contributions are defined as opening PRs, reviewing and commenting on PRs, opening and commenting on issues, writing documentation, commenting on docs, helping people on slack, participating in working groups, actively promoting the Knative project, running project events, and anything else that helps the Knative project succeed and grow.

This dashboard shows only GitHub based contributions and does not capture all the contributions we value. We expect this metric not to capture everyone who should be eligible to vote. If a community member has had significant contributions over the past year but is not captured in the stats.knative.dev dashboard, they will be able to submit an exception form to the steering committee who will then review and determine whether this member should be marked as an exception.

All eligible voters will be captured at knative/community/elections/$YEAR/SC/voters.md and the voters’ guide will be captured at knative/community/elections/$YEAR/SC/README.md similar to the kubernetes election process.

We are committed to an inclusive process and will adapt future eligibility requirements based on community feedback.

Election Process

Elections will be held using a time-limited Condorcet ranking on CIVS using the Schulze method. The top vote-getters will be elected to the open seats. This is the same process used for TOC elections.

Election Officers

The Steering Committee will appoint between one and three Election Officer(s) to administer the election. Elections Officers will be Knative community members in good standing who are eligible to vote, are not running for Steering in that election, who are not currently part of the Steering Committee and can make a public promise of impartiality. They will be responsible for:

  • Making all announcements associated with the election
  • Preparing and distributing electronic ballots
  • Judging exception requests
  • Assisting candidates in preparing and sharing statements
  • Tallying voting results according to the rules

Limitations on Company Representation

No more than two seats may be held by employees of the same organization (or conglomerate, in the case of companies owning each other). Additionally, each End-User seat (when available) must belong to an employee from a different organization. If the results of an election result in greater than two employees of the same organization, the lowest vote getters from any particular employer will be removed until representation on the committee is down to two.

If employers change because of job changes, acquisitions, or other events, in a way that would yield more than 2 seats being held by employees of the same organization, sufficient members of the committee must resign until only two employees of the same employer are left. If it is impossible to find sufficient members to resign, all employees of that organization will be removed and new special elections held. In the event of a question of company membership (for example evaluating independence of corporate subsidiaries) a majority of all non-involved Steering Committee members will decide.

Vacancies

In the event of a resignation or other loss of an elected SC member, the candidate with the next most votes from the previous election will be offered the seat, provided that person otherwise qualifies to join the SC. This process will continue until the seat is filled.

In case this fails to fill the seat, a special election for that position will be held as soon as possible, unless the regular SC election is less than 7 weeks away. Eligible voters from the most recent election will vote in the special election. Eligibility will not be redetermined at the time of the special election. Any replacement SC member will serve out the remainder of the term for the person they are replacing, regardless of the length of that remainder.

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