OpenSSL Communities

Foundation Open Hours Agenda

JE Jon Ericson Thu 15 Jan 2026 8:08AM Public Seen by 134

Purpose

Sometime issues get lost in the shuffle. This can be frustrating for people who have a special interest in an overlooked issue. So @beldmit proposed the Foundation hold regular open hours to discuss issues to see if there is something that can be done to address them.

Process

  1. The process starts with a GitHub issue. Anyone may request an overlooked issue to be put on the Open Hours agenda.

  2. Anyone may add an issue to this agenda as a reply to this very post. Once a month or so, the community manager will organize an Open Hours meeting to discuss the issues on the agenda.

  3. If issues can be resolved asynchronously, they will be removed from the pending agenda. Ultimately the goal is to resolve issues that aren't getting attention, not have another meeting to discuss issues.

  4. The Open Hours meeting should include people who have a stake in the outstanding issues and people who can make decisions and plan any work that might be needed. This will likely include at least some committers and directors of the Foundation, but will be open for anyone who wants to attend.

  5. The community manager will schedule a meeting to discuss outstanding issues using a meeting time poll.

  6. The goal of the meeting will be to make a decision about the next steps (if any) for each outstanding issue. Getting issues unstuck is a positive outcome. While it might be disappointing, another positive outcome might be clarifying the status of an issue even if it cannot be resolved at the moment.

  7. Outcomes of the meeting should be recorded in the GitHub issue and noted in the Open Hours agenda discussion. After the meeting, a new agenda for the next Open Hours should be posted so that the next set of issues can be collected.

This is a pilot program and subject to change as we try it out.

SL

Shane Lontis Fri 16 Jan 2026 4:52AM

Is this just related to issues or does it also refer to PR's not being reviewed in a timely manner? Once a PR scrolls off the first page, it becomes a bit more of a challenge to get it reviewed.
Some process to discuss holds would be good also, the 'OTC hold label' got removed and there now seems to be a 'hold:needs discussion' label.
It would also be unfortunate to have separate processes for Foundation/Corporation (in the same way it would not be good to have 2 SRT groups).

JE

Jon Ericson Thu 22 Jan 2026 5:31PM

I focused on issues for this process specifically to keep conversations at a high level. PRs rolling off the first page is a problem and this process might help to a degree. For instance, I might have an issue that's a high priority for my work and I submitted a PR that hasn't been reviewed. I could add that issue to the Open Hours agenda so that it could be discussed and a plan devised to move the PR forward.

I don't think this is a good place to get into the details of PRs themselves. There's a tendency to lose track of the bigger picture and be pulled into technical nuance. Sometimes that's necessary, of course, and sometimes discussing the technical bits can be the key to unlocking a decision. More often, however, the next step is likely to have someone go off and do some research about the technical details.

I'd hope there won't be a separate process for the Corporation. This process is fairly specifically about issues that are raised by the OpenSSL community that might be overlooked. The Corporation clearly has an interest in some, but probably not all, of these issues. I expect one potential outcome would be to forward issues on to the Corporation in some way. (A natural way would be to suggest the Corporation BAC and/or TAC bring it up in a future meeting.) So, of course, Corporation representatives would be welcome and invited to be a part of the process.

There is some overlap with the "hold" labels and the escalation policy I proposed. My guess is we won't need many different ways to get attention on overlooked items, but we might need a few tries to find something that gains traction.

R

Ravi Fri 6 Feb 2026 12:53PM

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/29417