OpenSSL Communities

Proposed Open Hours process

JE Jon Ericson Tue 25 Nov 2025 1:13AM Public Seen by 12

Based on the October F-BAC minutes:

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

  2. The agenda will be hosted on the General Discussion area. Anyone may add an issue to the agenda and when there is sufficient number of issues, the community manager will organize an Open Hours meeting to discuss them.

  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. (See, for an example, the opaque symmetric keys SIG process.)

  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.

  7. Outcomes of the meeting should be recorded either in the GitHub issue and maybe copied to 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.

The above is not set in stone. Very likely we'll find better ways to do things. Think of this as a potential pilot program.

DB

Dmitry Belyavsky Sat 6 Dec 2025 10:27AM

I strongly support this process. What are the next steps?

JE

Jon Ericson Thu 18 Dec 2025 5:59AM

@beldmit: The Foundation directors are excited with this concept. I'm going to formally write up the process to clarify a few of the bits that are unclear. Then I will start an agenda post to begin collecting GitHub issues.

I'm sorry this is taking longer than expected. The last few months have been busy with urgent conference and end-of year tasks for me. I'm hoping to have it going in January.