The Linux Foundation Open vSwitch Project Charter
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Effective August 9, 2016

1. Mission of Open vSwitch Project (“OVS”).

   The mission of OVS is to:

   a. create an open source, production quality virtual networking
      platform, including a software switch, control plane, and
      related components, that supports standard management interfaces
      and opens the forwarding functions to programmatic extension and
      control; and

   b. host the infrastructure for an OVS community, establishing a
      neutral home for community assets, infrastructure, meetings,
      events and collaborative discussions.

2. Technical Steering Committee (“TSC”)

   a. A TSC shall be composed of the Committers for OVS. The list of Committers
      on the TSC are available at :doc:`/internals/maintainers`.

   b. TSC projects generally will involve Committers and Contributors:

      i. Contributors: anyone in the technical community that
         contributes code, documentation or other technical artifacts
         to the OVS codebase.

      ii. Committers: Contributors who have the ability to commit
          directly to a project’s main branch or repository on an OVS
          project.

   c. Participation in as a Contributor and/or Committer is open to
      anyone under the terms of this Charter.  The TSC may:

      i. establish work flows and procedures for the submission,
         approval and closure or archiving of projects,

      ii. establish criteria and processes for the promotion of Contributors to
          Committer status, available at
          :doc:`/internals/committer-grant-revocation`. and

      iii. amend, adjust and refine the roles of Contributors and Committers
           listed in Section 2.b., create new roles and publicly document
           responsibilities and expectations for such roles, as it sees fit,
           available at :doc:`/internals/committer-responsibilities`.

   d. Responsibilities: The TSC is responsible for overseeing OVS
      activities and making decisions that impact the mission of OVS,
      including:

      i. coordinating the technical direction of OVS;

      ii. approving project proposals (including, but not limited to,
          incubation, deprecation and changes to a project’s charter
          or scope);

      iii. creating sub-committees or working groups to focus on
           cross-project technical issues and requirements;

      iv. communicating with external and industry organizations
          concerning OVS technical matters;

      v. appointing representatives to work with other open source or
         standards communities;

      vi. establishing community norms, workflows or policies including
          processes for contributing (available at
          :doc:`/internals/contributing/index`), issuing releases, and security
          issue reporting policies;

      vii. discussing, seeking consensus, and where necessary, voting
           on technical matters relating to the code base that affect
           multiple projects; and

      viii. coordinate any marketing, events or communications with
            The Linux Foundation.

3. TSC Voting

   a. While it is the goal of OVS to operate as a consensus based
      community, if any TSC decision requires a vote to move forward,
      the Committers shall vote on a one vote per Committer basis.

   b. TSC votes should be conducted by email. In the case of a TSC
      meeting where a valid vote is taken, the details of the vote and
      any discussion should be subsequently documented for the
      community (e.g. to the appropriate email mailing list).

   c. Quorum for TSC meetings shall require two-thirds of the TSC
      representatives. The TSC may continue to meet if quorum is not
      met, but shall be prevented from making any decisions requiring
      a vote at the meeting.

   d. Except as provided in Section 8.d. and 9.a., decisions by
      electronic vote (e.g. email) shall require a majority of all
      voting TSC representatives.  Decisions by electronic vote shall
      be made timely, and unless specified otherwise, within three (3)
      business days. Except as provided in Section 8.d. and 9.a.,
      decisions by vote at a meeting shall require a majority vote,
      provided quorum is met.

   e. In the event of a tied vote with respect to an action that
      cannot be resolved by the TSC, any TSC representative shall be
      entitled to refer the matter to the Linux Foundation for
      assistance in reaching a decision.

4. Antitrust Guidelines

   a. All participants in OVS shall abide by The Linux Foundation
      Antitrust Policy available at
      http://www.linuxfoundation.org/antitrust-policy.

   b. All members shall encourage open participation from any
      organization able to meet the participation requirements,
      regardless of competitive interests. Put another way, the
      community shall not seek to exclude any participant based on any
      criteria, requirements or reasons other than those that are
      reasonable and applied on a non-discriminatory basis to all
      participants.

5. Code of Conduct

   a. The TSC may adopt a specific OVS Project code of conduct, with approval
      from the LF.

6. Budget and Funding

   a. The TSC shall coordinate any budget or funding needs with The
      Linux Foundation. Companies participating may be solicited to
      sponsor OVS activities and infrastructure needs on a voluntary
      basis.

   b. The Linux Foundation shall have custody of and final authority
      over the usage of any fees, funds and other cash receipts.

   c. A General & Administrative (G&A) fee will be applied by the
      Linux Foundation to funds raised to cover Finance, Accounting,
      and operations.  The G&A fee shall equal 9% of OVS’s first
      $1,000,000 of gross receipts and 6% of OVS’s gross receipts over
      $1,000,000.

   d. Under no circumstances shall The Linux Foundation be expected or
      required to undertake any action on behalf of OVS that is
      inconsistent with the tax exempt purpose of The Linux
      Foundation.

7. General Rules and Operations.

   The OVS project shall be conducted so as to:

   a. engage in the work of the project in a professional manner
      consistent with maintaining a cohesive community, while also
      maintaining the goodwill and esteem of The Linux Foundation in
      the open source software community;

   b. respect the rights of all trademark owners, including any
      branding and usage guidelines;

   c. engage The Linux Foundation for all OVS press and analyst
      relations activities;

   d. upon request, provide information regarding Project
      participation, including information regarding attendance at
      Project-sponsored events, to The Linux Foundation; and

   e. coordinate with The Linux Foundation in relation to any websites
      created directly for OVS.

8. Intellectual Property Policy

   a. Members agree that all new inbound code contributions to OVS shall be
      made under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (available at
      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0). All contributions shall be
      accompanied by a Developer Certificate of Origin sign-off
      (http://developercertificate.org) that is submitted through a TSC and
      LF-approved contribution process.

   b. All outbound code will be made available under the Apache
      License, Version 2.0.

   c. All documentation will be contributed to and made available by
      OVS under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

   d. For any new project source code, if an alternative inbound or
      outbound license is required for compliance with the license for
      a leveraged open source project (e.g. GPLv2 for Linux kernel) or
      is otherwise required to achieve OVS’s mission, the TSC may
      approve the use of an alternative license for specific inbound
      or outbound contributions on an exception basis. Any exceptions
      must be approved by a majority vote of the entire TSC and must
      be limited in scope to what is required for such purpose.
      Please email tsc@openvswitch.org to obtain exception approval.

   e. Subject to available funds, OVS may engage The Linux Foundation
      to determine the availability of, and register, trademarks,
      service marks, which shall be owned by the LF.

9. Amendments

   a. This charter may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the entire
      TSC, subject to approval by The Linux Foundation.
