A FAQ geared towards CNCF TOC and project issues.
The TOC is a body elected by a variety of constituents. There is a public election schedule: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/process/election-schedule.md
The best way to get involved is to start attending TOC meetings and become an official TOC Contributor: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/CONTRIBUTORS.md
If you have specific focus areas, CNCF TAG meetings are good opportunity to dive in: https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/main/tags
The CNCF Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) scale contributions by the CNCF technical and user community, while retaining integrity and increasing quality in support of our mission.
https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/main/tags
CNCF does not require its hosted projects to follow any specific governance model by default.
Instead, CNCF specifies that graduated projects need to "[e]xplicitly define a project governance and committer process."
This varied and open governance approach has led to different projects defining what is best and optimized for their community:
- https://github.com/containerd/project/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md
- https://github.com/coredns/coredns/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md
- https://github.com/helm/community/blob/master/governance/governance.md
- https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/governance.md
- https://prometheus.io/governance/
- https://thanos.io/governance.md/
All project assets like trademarks, domains, builds, registries, github are neutrally owned by the foundation members versus a single vendor.
Neither the CNCF Governing Board (GB) nor the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is responsible for managing CNCF-hosted projects.
Instead, the maintainers of those projects manage them; this includes defining the governance process. The GB is responsible for the budget.
TOC members are available to provide guidance and conflict resolution if desired to the projects but do not control them. The TOC also helps mature projects through the various CNCF project maturity levels to ensure projects meet the expected graduation criteria. To date, we have had no meaningful disagreements between the TOC and project maintainers.
Please see the TOC Principles for more details.
The CNCF provides a variety of services that are accessible by maintainers via the ServiceDesk: https://github.com/cncf/servicedesk
End user companies use cloud native technologies internally, but do not sell any cloud native services externally. Examples of end user companies are Adidas, Apple, Capital One, Spotify, and The New York Times. Examples of cloud native vendors (and so not end users) include cloud providers (e.g., Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure), consulting firms (e.g., Accenture, Booz Allen), infrastructure software vendors (e.g., SUSE, Red Hat), and telecom operators (e.g., AT&T, China Mobile).
If you’re not sure if your company is an end user, please compare the members of the CNCF end user community to the vendor members of CNCF and find your company or one similar to yours in one group or the other. Or, you can email info@cncf.io and we’ll help you.
CNCF uses revenues from events first and foremost to cover the cost of events. The remaining money, which can be thought of as the events’ profits, are used to directly support CNCF’s hosted projects. Two recent examples of this include funding $250,000 for the Kubernetes security audit and funding nearly $100,000 for Jepsen testing of etcd. The services CNCF provides to its hosted projects are detailed in the CNCF Annual Report and the Project Journey Reports for Kubernetes and Envoy.
Yes! In fact, CNCF invests both all events profits and a significant portion of its membership revenue in support of its hosted projects.
No. CNCF’s charter Section 3(c) explicitly calls out fairness as a core value and requires us to ‘avoid undue influence, bad behavior or “pay-to-play” decision-making.’ Also projects are openly governed and technical participation never requires any form of membership. The correct way to view this is that CNCF members PAY TO SUSTAIN and govern the shared budget which goes to sustain project activities such as events,scholarships and security audits.
No. All project-related decisions are made by the project maintainers. Maintainership and governance processes are decided by the projects without regard to CNCF membership. Here’s more detail on open governance.
The main member benefit is to support the cloud native ecosystem and to be publicly seen supporting it. You can see other benefits on the Join page, but none of them involve control over projects. The governing board has ultimate control over CNCF, but CNCF is managed through a written charter and it consists of many disparate and competing interests. As a result, decision-making is consensus-based.