This is a Work in Progress, documenting approximately how we have been operating up to this point.

# Principles

The Kubernetes community adheres to the following principles:
* Open: Kubernetes is open source. See repository guidelines and CLA, below.
* Welcoming and respectful: See Code of Conduct, below.
* Transparent and accessible: Work and collaboration should be done in public. See SIG governance, below.
* Merit: Ideas and contributions are accepted according to their technical merit and alignment with project objectives, [scope], and [design principles].

# Code of Conduct

The Kubernetes community abides by the [Kubernetes code of conduct]. Here is an excerpt:

_As contributors and maintainers of this project, and in the interest of fostering an open and welcoming community, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities._

As a member of the Kubernetes project, you represent the project and your fellow contributors.
We value our community tremendously and we'd like to keep cultivating a friendly and collaborative
environment for our contributors and users. We want everyone in the community to have
[positive experiences].

# Values

[We have them!]

# Community membership

See [community membership][community members]

# Community groups

The project is comprised of the following types of subgroups:
* Special Interest Groups, SIGs
  * Subprojects
* Working Groups, WGs
* Committees

![Kubernetes Governance Diagram](kubernetes_governance_diagram.png)

## SIGs

The Kubernetes project is organized primarily into Special Interest
Groups, or SIGs. Each SIG is comprised of members from multiple
companies and organizations, with a common purpose of advancing the
project with respect to a specific topic, such as Networking or
Documentation. Our goal is to enable a distributed decision structure
and code ownership, as well as providing focused forums for getting
work done, making decisions, and onboarding new contributors. Every
identifiable subpart of the project (e.g., github org, repository,
subdirectory, API, test, issue, PR) is intended to be owned by some
SIG.

Areas covered by SIGs may be vertically focused on particular
components or functions, cross-cutting/horizontal, spanning many/all
functional areas of the project, or in support of the project
itself. Examples:
* Vertical: Network, Storage, Node, Scheduling
* Horizontal: Scalability, Architecture
* Project: Testing, Release, Docs, PM, Contributor Experience

SIGs must have at least one and ideally two SIG chairs at any given
time. SIG chairs are intended to be organizers and facilitators,
responsible for the operation of the SIG and for communication and
coordination with the other SIGs, the Steering Committee, and the
broader community.

Each SIG must have a charter that specifies its scope (topics,
subsystems, code repos and directories), responsibilities, areas of
authority, how members and roles of authority/leadership are
selected/granted, how decisions are made, and how conflicts are
resolved. See the [SIG charter process] for details on how charters are managed.
SIGs should be relatively free to customize or change how they operate,
within some broad guidelines and constraints imposed by cross-SIG processes
(e.g., the release process) and assets (e.g., the kubernetes repo).

A primary reason that SIGs exist is as forums for collaboration.
Much work in a SIG should stay local within that SIG. However, SIGs
must communicate in the open, ensure other SIGs and community members
can find notes of meetings, discussions, designs, and decisions, and
periodically communicate a high-level summary of the SIG's work to the
community.

See [sig governance] for more details about current SIG operating
mechanics, such as mailing lists, meeting times, etc.

More information:
[SIG Governance Requirements]
[SIG Lifecycle] - for a tactical checklist on creation and retirement

### Subprojects

Specific work efforts within SIGs are divided into **subprojects**.
Every part of the Kubernetes code and documentation must be owned by
some subproject. Some SIGs may have a single subproject, but many SIGs
have multiple significant subprojects with distinct (though sometimes
overlapping) sets of contributors and [owners], who act as
subproject’s technical leaders: responsible for vision and direction
and overall design, choose/approve change proposal (KEP) approvers,
field technical escalations, etc.

Example subprojects for a few SIGs:
* SIG Network: pod networking (CNI, etc.), Service (incl. kube-proxy),
Ingress, DNS, and Network policy
* SIG Cluster Lifecycle: kubeadm, kops, kubespray, minikube, ...

Subprojects for each SIG are documented in [sigs.yaml].

## Working Groups

We need community rallying points to facilitate discussions/work
regarding topics that are short-lived or that span multiple SIGs.

Working groups are primarily used to facilitate topics of discussion that are in
scope for Kubernetes but that cross SIG lines. If a set of folks in the
community want to get together and discuss a topic, they can do so without
forming a Working Group.

See [working group governance] for more details about forming and disbanding
Working Groups.

Working groups are documented in [sigs.yaml].


## Committees

Some topics, such as Security or Code of Conduct, require discretion. Whereas
SIGs are voluntary groups which operate in the open and anyone can join,
Committees do not have open membership and do not always operate in the open.
The steering committee can form committees as needed, for bounded or unbounded
duration.  Membership of a committee is decided by the steering committee,
however, all committee members must be [community members].  Like a SIG, a
committee has a charter and a chair, and will report to the steering committee
periodically, and to the community as makes sense, given the charter.

## Community Group Annual Reports
As you can see in the descriptions above, the project is robust with diverse
groups of contributors and their varying degrees of expected communications.

The [annual community group health check] will establish an opportunity for deeper
 dialogue and broader communication across the chairs of each group and the
 Steering Committee.

## Cross-project Communication and Coordination

While most work shouldn’t require expensive coordination with other
SIGs, there will be efforts (features, refactoring, etc.) that cross
SIG boundaries.  In this case, it is expected that the SIGs coordinate
with each other and come to mutually agreed solutions. In some cases,
it may make sense to form a Working Group for joint work.  Cross-SIG
coordination will naturally require more time and implies a certain
amount of overhead.  This is intentional to encourage changes to be
well encapsulated whenever possible.

On the other hand, several SIGs do have project-wide impact, for
example Release, Testing, and API Machinery. Even those that do not
may sometimes need to make changes or impose new processes or
conventions that affect other SIGs. In these cases, project-wide
communication processes will need to be followed. For example,
proposals with project-wide impact will need to be announced more
broadly, with the opportunity for members of other SIGs to provide
feedback and guidance. However, the SIG that owns the area, according
to its charter, will own the decision. In the case of extended debate
or deadlock, decisions may be escalated to the Steering Committee,
which is expected to be uncommon.

The [KEP process] facilitates definition, agreement and communication of efforts that cross SIG boundaries.
SIGs are encouraged to use this process for larger efforts.
This process is also available for smaller efforts within a SIG.

# Repository guidelines

All new repositories under Kubernetes github orgs should follow the process outlined in the [kubernetes repository guidelines].

Note that "Kubernetes incubator" process has been deprecated in favor of the new guidelines.

# CLA

All contributors must sign the CNCF CLA, as described [here](CLA.md).

[positive experiences]: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2016/12/14/diversity-scholarship-series-one-software-engineers-unexpected-cloudnativecon-kubecon-experience
[sigs.yaml]: /sigs.yaml
[SIG Lifecycle]: /sig-wg-lifecycle.md
[We have them!]: /values.md
[Kubernetes code of conduct]: /code-of-conduct.md
[design principles]: https://git.k8s.io/design-proposals-archive/architecture/principles.md
[scope]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/what-is-kubernetes/
[community members]: /community-membership.md
[sig governance]: /committee-steering/governance/sig-governance.md
[owners]: /community-membership.md#subproject-owner
[sig charter process]: /committee-steering/governance/README.md
[kubernetes repository guidelines]: /github-management/kubernetes-repositories.md
[working group governance]: /committee-steering/governance/wg-governance.md
[SIG Governance Requirements]: /committee-steering/governance/sig-governance-requirements.md
[annual community group health check]: /committee-steering/governance/annual-reports.md
[KEP process]: https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/tree/master/keps#kubernetes-enhancement-proposals-keps
