Foundation TAC kickoff meeting minutes

Jun 18, 2025 | Foundation TAC kickoff

Attendees: Aditya Koranga, Dmitry Belyavsky, Barry Fussell (bfussell), Igor Ustinov, Jon Ericson, Matt Caswell, Nicola Tuveri, Tomas Mraz

Agenda

• Welcome (Matt)
  
• Introductions (All)
  
• The formal OpenSSL Technical Committee (OTC) (Matt)
  
  • Since the OTC was founded in 2019 it made many useful decisions and worked well enough
    
  • Problem: it was a closed group and not very transparent
  • We want to give the community a voice, so we moved to an advisory decision structure.
    
  • Two way communication: representatives communicate with their communities and pass on community input to the Foundation via the TAC.
    
• Meeting schedule (Jon)
  
  • Nicola suggests 2 rotating slots based on UTC to avoid daylight
    
  • Barry and Aditya will have a hard time finding any compatible time
    
  • 5 hours earlier would work for most of us
    
  • Decision: 3rd Thursday of the month at 14:00 UTC
    
• OpenSSL Conference (Jon)
  
  • TACs and BACs will be part of the program committee
    
  • Can you speak? Please apply
    
  • Please share the conference and speaking opportunity with your network
    
  • Talks need not be specifically about OpenSSL
    
  • Face-to-face meeting around the time of the conference (Tomas)
    
• How we deal with technical discussions. See: Discussions outcome (Matt and Jon)
  
  • OTC-hold label prompted a discussion in the next OTC meeting
    
  • Problem: feels unfriendly for people who have PRs placed on hold
    
  • We are looking for a more open process
    
  • Jon proposed he take on a mediation role to make sure conversations are happening and decisions are being made
    
  • Nicola and Dmitry expressed concerns the process could be slow and add overhead
    
  • Nicola also express concern the most involved people would end up making the decisions anyway and there are so many platforms.
    
  • Different types of conflict require different solutions (Tomas and Matt)
    
  • Conflicts begin in GitHub, so they would need to be moved to the community platform (Tomas)
    
  • Nicola suggested a label so that conflict can come from the bottom up
    
  • Nicola plans to open a discussion within academics with my proposal of having a label, to see if I gather any interest
    
• AOB

Notes

• Help us promote:
  
  • OpenSSL in the Wild survey
    
  • Become a speaker:

Action items

• [ ] F2F meeting proposal for TACs, BACs, Foundation and Corporation representatives (Matt)