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Version: v2.0.0-rc

Governance

wasmCloud is a community-led open source project Incubating with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.​

wasmCloud joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Sandbox project in 2021 and was accepted as an Incubating project in 2024.

As a CNCF project, wasmCloud operates under the CNCF charter and is guided by the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). All wasmCloud community participants are expected to abide by the CNCF Code of Conduct.

wasmCloud code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and documentation is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. All contributions require a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO).

The comprehensive and canonical document on wasmCloud project governance is GOVERNANCE.md in the main repository. This page provides an overview; refer to GOVERNANCE.md for authoritative details.

Maintainers​

The wasmCloud project has two levels of maintainers. For detailed responsibilities at each level, see the Contributor Ladder.

Org maintainers oversee the overall wasmCloud project and its health. They are responsible for maintaining the project's mission, vision, and scope; refining governance; making project-level decisions; managing the wasmCloud brand and assets; handling code of conduct violations; and overseeing security issues. There are between three and nine org maintainers at any time.

Project maintainers focus on a single codebase, group of related codebases, or service (such as this documentation site) within the wasmCloud organization. The maintainers for each repository are listed in that repository's MAINTAINERS.md file.

Becoming a maintainer​

Any project maintainer of an active wasmCloud organization project is eligible to become an org maintainer. When a vacancy opens, any contributor to the wasmCloud org may nominate a project maintainer to fill it. The nomination period is three weeks, after which org maintainers vote; the nomination passes with a super-majority. New project-level maintainers are added at the discretion of existing project maintainers for that repository.

Stepping down​

A maintainer steps down by opening a PR to move themselves to the emeritus section of the relevant MAINTAINERS.md. Maintainers may also take a leave of absence of up to 6 months (extendable by majority vote of the project's maintainers) without losing their maintainer status; after 6 months without contact, they are moved to emeritus.

Decision making​

The default decision-making process at both the org and project level is lazy consensus: a decision is considered supported as long as no one objects. Silence is implicit agreement.

When consensus cannot be reached, a maintainer can call for a vote. Most votes require a simple majority. The following decisions require a super-majority:

  • Enforcing a code of conduct violation
  • Removing a maintainer for any reason other than inactivity
  • Changing the governance rules
  • Licensing and intellectual property changes

Simple majority is sufficient for adding, archiving, or removing subprojects and for financial decisions within CNCF guidelines.

Code of conduct​

This project follows the CNCF Code of Conduct. Possible violations should be reported to the org maintainers. If the possible violation involves an org maintainer, that person is recused from voting and the matter must be escalated to the CNCF.

Community meetings​

The wasmCloud community holds weekly community meetings open to all. Meetings cover project updates, demos, roadmap discussion, and Q&A.

All are welcome to attend and contribute agenda items.

Roadmap​

The wasmCloud roadmap is maintained publicly on GitHub Projects. Roadmap items are proposed via GitHub issues and discussed in community meetings.

Communications​

The primary communication channels for the wasmCloud project are GitHub Issues, PRs, and Discussions, and the wasmCloud Slack. The org maintainers can also be reached by email at cncf-wasmCloud-maintainers@lists.cncf.io.