More community leadership: Regularly electing the Istio Technical Oversight Committee
Announcing changes to our TOC charter and our first open election.
Like many Open Source foundations and projects, the Istio project has two governance groups: a Steering Committee, that oversees the administrative and marketing aspects of the project, and a Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), responsible for cross-cutting product and design decisions.
The Steering Committee represents the companies and contributors that support the Istio project, while the TOC is the top of an individual contributor ladder made up of our members, maintainers and working group leads.
Each year, we build our Steering Committee with representatives from our top commercial contributors, and members elected by our maintainer community. This is the group with the responsibility of electing new TOC members, who have traditionally served indefinitely.
We want to ensure that all the members of our community have the opportunity to stand for, and serve in, our leadership positions. Today, we are pleased to announce our transition to a regularly-elected TOC, with members serving two-year terms, and call for candidates for our first election.
What does the Technical Oversight Committee do?
The charter for the TOC spells out the responsibilities of its members, including:
- Setting the overall technical direction and roadmap of the project.
- Resolving technical issues, disagreements, and escalations.
- Declaring maturity levels for Istio features.
- Approving the creation and dissolution of working groups and approving leadership changes of working groups.
- Ensuring the team adheres to our code of conduct and respects our values.
- Fostering an environment for a healthy and happy community of developers and contributors.
While the interest of our vendors is represented by our Steering Committee, TOC membership is associated with the individual, irrespective of their current employer. Members act independently, in their individual capacities, and must prioritize the best interests of the project and the community. This has always been achieved by method of consensus, and as such we seat an even number of members. The TOC has traditionally comprised 6 members, and this remains the case going forward.
What changes with the new charter?
The key changes in the new charter, recently ratified by the Steering Committee, are:
- Members will now serve 2 year terms.
- The Steering Committee will vote every year to (re-†) seat 3 of the 6 members on the TOC.
- The mechanics for election are clearly defined, including the expectation for candidates to qualify for the election, and how they will be evaluated.
- The expectations of regular meetings between the Steering and TOC have been formalized.
- There is now a formal process for removing a TOC member, should they lose the confidence of the Steering Committee.
† There is no limit on the number of terms a member may serve for, and incumbent TOC members are welcome to run again at the end of their term.
TOC member farewells
We recently announced the retirement of long-time contributor Eric Van Norman. We also now bid farewell to Neeraj Poddar from the Istio TOC. Neeraj has been involved with the project since 2017, co-founding Aspen Mesh within F5, and later leading Gloo Mesh as VP of Engineering at Solo.io. He was first elected to the TOC in 2020. Neeraj has taken a role as VP of Engineering at NimbleEdge, and we congratulate him and wish him well for the future.
Maintainers: stand in our first election
We have set our annual TOC elections to occur after the seating of the Steering Committee each year, which will put the first instance around March 2025.
However, as we currently have two vacancies, we are announcing our first election will be a by-election to fill these two seats for the remainder of their terms.
The bar for joining the TOC is deliberately set high. Candidates must be tenured maintainers, recognized within the Istio community as collaborative technical leaders, and meet qualification criteria which demonstrate their suitability for the position.
To stand for a TOC seat, please send an e-mail to elections@istio.io, including a link to a one-page Google Doc with your self-assessment against the qualification criteria. Nominations will close in two weeks, on 31 October.
Good luck!
