The TOF body shall consist of between 5 and 9 members selected by the OpenBMC Development Community by vote. The current number of members is 7 and this shall only be changed, prior to a TOF election, by a unanimous decision at a regular meeting of the current TOF body.
TOF members must themselves be members of the OpenBMC Development Community. This is determined by voting eligibility; ie. an individual is only eligible to be elected a member of the TOF if they are eligible to vote in their own election.
To encourage a diverse viewpoint, no more than 2 TOF members may be employed by, or working under a contract relationship for, the same entity unless (one of):
Members are elected by Ranked Choice Voting of the OpenBMC Development Community at twice yearly elections. Members of the TOF typically serve a 1 year term before their seat is up for re-election; members have no term limits.
To facilitate continuity of the TOF body, these elections are held every 6 months in which half (+/- 1) of the seats are re-elected. Due to additions or subtractions in seats and membership resignations, more than half (+1) of the seats may need to be filled in a single election. Prior to the election the current TOF may determine a certain number of seats will be 6 month terms, to return the number of seats per election to a more equal number, and these seats will be given to the individuals with the later results in the RCV.
Elections are to begin on March 1st and September 1st at 00:00 UTC and conclude seven days later. Election schedule is as follows:
| Q1 Elections | Q3 Elections | Action on or by 00:00 UTC. |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 1st | July 1st | Developer contributions close for OpenBMC Development Community membership eligibility (See “Metrics”). |
| Jan 15th | July 15th | Current TOF must publish a list of eligible voting members. |
| Jan 30th | July 30th | Nominations (self or peer) for TOF seats must be sent to the mailing list. |
| Jan 30th | July 30th | Developers disputing membership eligibility must submit a petition request to the current TOF. |
| Feb 15th | Aug 15th | Current TOF must publish a final list of eligible voting members and upcoming candidates for TOF seats. |
| March 1st | Sept 1st | Election begins. |
| March 7th | Sept 7th | Election concludes. |
| March 15th | Sept 15th | Current TOF publishes election results and updates the TOF membership document with new members and terms. |
| Apr 1st | Oct 1st | TOF member terms conclude / begin. |
This document shall be maintained with a list of current members and their term end (sorted by term conclusion followed by alphabetically by preferred name):
| Name | Term Conclusion |
|---|---|
| Andrew Geissler | 2024-10-01 |
| Ed Tanous | 2024-10-01 |
| Zev Weiss | 2024-10-01 |
| Andrew Jeffery | 2025-04-01 |
| Jason Bills | 2025-04-01 |
| Patrick Williams | 2025-04-01 |
| William Kennington | 2025-04-01 |
Membership in the OpenBMC development community is determined by development contributions to the project. By contributing to the project, developers gain a voice in the technical direction of the project by shaping the membership in the TOF.
Membership is determined using data from the previous 6 months of development contributions. Using this data, the TOF will publish a list of Active Members of the two tiers. An individual who was an Active Member of a tier in the preceding 6 months, but does not qualify in the most recent 6 months, will be listed as an Member Emeritus for 6 months. Both Active and Emertius members are eligible for elections.
There are two tiers of membership in the development community: normal and highly-productive. It is the responsibility of the TOF to set metrics for determining community and tier membership. The normal membership tier is expected to maintain a low-bar to encourage a diverse and vibrant membership, while the highly-productive membership tier is expected to represent between 12.5% (1/8) and 20% (1/5) of the community. (Whenever the highly-productive tier has representation outside of this percentage, the TOF should adjust the determining metrics for the next election / membership cycle.) In any election cycle, normal developers are given a vote weight of 1 and highly-productive developers are given a vote weight of 3.
Any individual who feels their contributions to the project were not recognized by the existing metrics may petition the TOF for inclusion in either tier and the TOF will make a determination. Examples of these types of contributions might be: development in upstream Open Source communities not directly controlled by OpenBMC, but for features leveraged by the OpenBMC codebase, and significant support activities in areas not covered by existing metrics such as Wikis and Discord.
Currently, work on the following projects requires an explicit petition for recognition of ToF membership eligibility:
Determination of membership in the community is made by a point system for activities.
The TOF may decide to exempt commits which are only machine configuration or sub-sections of a repository only intended for use by one entity. For example repositories named company-ipmi-oem-provider, subdirectories named oem/company, Yocto recipes in meta-company, and entity-manager configuration might all be exempted. Any such exemptions should be applied consistently to all members.
Points required for Active membership (in the preceding 6 months):