Our primary mission is creating and maintaining a safe and respectful community. Our role is to provide and enforce a well-considered viewpoint on what constitutes acceptable behavior within our community. The Code of Conduct serves as the primary policy document and is supported with additional references and tools as needed. Since maintaining a safe environment is a very large part of what the committee does, we must carefully balance transparency of process with preserving the privacy of all individuals involved when an incident report is made to this committee or to any other community leader.
The committee understands how challenging these matters are for everyone involved, and that the process is never perfect by nature of its need to serve everyone in the community equally. That said, the committee is oriented toward the protection of our community and takes that duty seriously.
The committee maintains a private mailing list for reporting incidents, asking confidential questions, and internal committee communication:
This email alias may not be the fastest path to a response in urgent situations. If a response is time critical, reaching individual committee members via Slack is advisable. But an email must also be sent to conduct@kubernetes.io for tracking purposes. This feedback helps guide the implementation of new policies and procedures.
Community moderation administrators in Slack, the mailing list, community events, and elsewhere are extensions of the committee and are able to be first responders to incidents. They are explicitly empowered to take those actions necessary to protect the community, especially when no committee members are available. All such events must be retroactively reviewed by the committee for appropriateness and consistency.
Steering committee members may also act in limited cases to enforce the code of conduct. Examples of this may be the deletion of GitHub comments, offensive Slack messages, or the eviction of bad actors from public meetings. These actions must be communicated to the committee for review.
The committee is composed of 5 members. The committee is the primary recipient of all conduct complaints regardless of where in the community they originate. The only exception is at CNCF events, where the event Code of Conduct process supersedes this. That is primarily due to the high-impact nature of in-person violations and the need for more extensive staffing. This committee should be informed and consulted for all violations involving Kubernetes community members, regardless of circumstances.
Additionally, the committee is responsible for drafting and executing on reporting, enforcement, and other policy matters. In most cases, policies are made public, however some materials will be confidential by nature of their content and application. As a general rule, the committee will provide as much transparency as possible, except in specific incident reports where no personally-identifying information about the reporter/reported will be shared. Anonymized aggregated incident data may be provided to the community as the committee sees fit.
The Kubernetes Steering Committee has explicitly delegated all Code of Conduct authority and enforcement to this committee. The committee can, at its discretion, delegate some authority to those tasked with enforcement.
See elections
The committee strives to respond quickly to reports, as well as initiate whatever actions are appropriate based on severity, risk, urgency, and impact. In some cases, this requires individual committee members to take immediate action such as (but not limited to) removing a GitHub comment, deleting a Slack message, or ejecting someone from a community meeting. The committee, however, will retroactively review any action taken in such instances to ensure it was appropriate.
The committee meets biweekly unless additional interstitial meetings are required to address incidents or other critical work. Meetings are not recorded, however confidential notes may be kept when necessary to provide continuity to future committee members. Wherever possible, documentation necessary for the internal operation of the committee will be stored in a private GitHub repository.
Meetings are considered at quorum when a simple majority of the members are present. Where there are 4 or fewer members available due vacant seats or recusal, quorum is 2.
Any changes to the charter require explicit LGTM or Approve from all committee members. For pull requests, a /hold will be applied until all approvals are present. Any changes merged without consensus will be reverted.
The Code of Conduct committee will keep your report confidential. The CoCC may share report information with the Steering Committee if they believe doing so is appropriate. Past incidents are communicated generally to new committee members so they can have historical context for future issues. While this may allow the establishment of bias in new members it is believed that the educational value of this information outweighs the potential negatives.
A member of the Code of Conduct committee shall recuse themselves from evaluating and responding to any incident for which they are unable to be impartial. If a committee member does not recuse themselves they may be removed from participation by a unanimous vote of all other members of the committee.
In the event that one or more of the seats on the committee is unoccupied, for any reason, a replacement member will be appointed by the steering committee as soon as reasonable. That person will serve out the remainder of the term of the person they are replacing.
If committee members believe that the committee is no longer able to act in accordance with the above Mission/Purpose the committee may vote to dissolve. The committee should specify a date of dissolution. Dissolution requires an affirmative vote of more than 75% of committee members, and must be unanimous when the committee has only 4 or fewer members. If the committee is dissolved, all seats are vacated on the date specified.
A committee member may be removed from the committee by a unanimous decision of the other committee members. The member should be given the opportunity to resign before they are removed. Removal should only be considered for the following reasons:
- The member has been found to have committed a code of conduct violation.
- The member is convicted of a felony.
- The member has been completely out of contact for more than 30 consecutive calendar days without having made prior arrangements.
- The member has explicitly, publicly violated the privacy of individuals involved by disclosure of personally-identifiable information (accidental disclosure via inference is not a valid reason for removal, though may be cause for a code of conduct violation report.)
- The member is no longer able to perform the duties of the position due to extreme circumstances such as refugee displacement or diminution of mental capacity.
If a committee member chooses not to continue in their role, for whatever self-elected reason, they must notify the committee as well as the steering committee in writing. As a courtesy, such notifications should be given at least 30 calendar days in advance of their departure.