OpenSSL Communities

Notice: randomized selection for seat rotation

EC Election Committee Thu 15 Jan 2026 6:57PM Public Seen by 16

Dear Advisory Members,

As part of recent changes to term length and rotation, we need to determine which advisory committee seats will be up for election in the next cycle. To do this in a neutral and defensible way, we will use a randomized selection process.

Some current members have already indicated that they do not intend to stand in the next election cycle for their own reasons. Those seats will be handled accordingly and are not the subject of this randomization. The randomization applies only to the remaining eligible seats where rotation must be determined.

The purpose of the randomization is to ensure that the selection of seats for election is unbiased, not influenced by individuals or committees, and can be clearly explained and justified.

Process summary

  • Multiple independent entropy inputs will be combined.

  • Inputs are mixed using a standard KDF and used to produce a randomized selection.

  • No single party can control the outcome.

  • The process will be executed by a neutral operator and recorded.

  • The code and methodology will be published.

Advisory committee members are strongly encouraged to contribute entropy (for example via a coin toss or dice roll), provided as a hex string. Participation is optional and does not confer influence over the result, but additional independent entropy strengthens the process.

Further details will follow shortly.

-- Anton Arapov, Election Committee

EC

Election Committee Tue 20 Jan 2026 1:29PM

Dear Advisory Members,

The advisory committee seat rotation for the 2026 election cycle was completed yesterday, January 19 (UTC), using the randomized process described earlier.

BAC seat numbering and outcome
For clarity and reproducibility, the BAC seats were numbered as follows at the time of execution:

  1. Academics — Billy Brumley

  2. Committers — Paul Dale

  3. Distributions — Jaroslav Reznik

  4. Individuals — Randall Becker

  5. Large Businesses — Jeff Johnson

  6. Small Businesses — James Bourne

The randomized output sequence was:

3 4 2 6 1 5

@Paul Dale (seat 2) has stepped down at the end of the current term. Per the defined process, if a vacated seat appeared among the first three seats selected to remain, the next seat in the sequence was used instead.

Applying this rule results in the following BAC communities being opened for election in 2026: Academics, Committers, Large Businesses.

Process and verification

The selection was produced using the OpenSSL Library together with multiple independent entropy sources, including hardware-based RNGs and entropy contributions from advisory members, and overseen by the OpenSSL Corporation Election Committee.

All materials required to independently verify the outcome are published:

Execution command and result

The following command was used to generate the BAC sequence:

./ossl-rand-seq -min 1 -max 6 -rand kdf \
  -label "OpenSSL Corporation Advisory Committee Election 2026" \
  -salt <published combined entropy>

Resulting sequence:

3 4 2 6 1 5

Using the published inputs and code, this result can be reproduced end-to-end.

Regards,
Anton Arapov, Election Committee