OpenSSL Communities
Thu 19 Jun 2025 4:59PM

Proposal: GitHub label to help communities track relevant technical discussions

NT Nicola Tuveri Public Seen by 14

Following a recent discussion at the kickoff meeting of the OpenSSL Foundation TAC, I’d like to gather feedback on a lightweight mechanism to help bridge the gap between GitHub technical activity and OpenSSL community discussions on Loomio.

Most of OpenSSL’s technical discussions naturally happen on GitHub—in issues and pull requests—but this can make it difficult for members of the broader communities (Academic, Commercial, User, etc.) to track developments and engage meaningfully before decisions are finalized.

To help address this, I propose defining a new GitHub label, inspired by the old `OTC-Hold` label, but with a different purpose.

🔖  Label concept:

  • The label could be named something like tac-interest or community-attn.

  • It would be non-blocking—unlike OTC-Hold, it does not delay or gate merging.

  • Maintainers and committers can apply it to issues and PRs they feel might benefit from broader input or awareness.

  • Interested individuals can subscribe to this label to filter the most relevant activity

  • Community members can start forum threads referencing these items to open discussion within their group (e.g., Academic).

  • This gives elected representatives (like myself) a better view into topics that resonate within their community.

✅  Benefits:

  • Encourages earlier awareness and engagement from community members.

  • Supports bottom-up engagement: community members can take initiative to discuss or flag issues, rather than waiting for Foundation/Corporation-initiated outreach.

  • Helps elected representatives monitor items of potential relevance.

  • Keeps GitHub as the canonical space for technical discussion, while enabling forum-based community reflection.

  • Low overhead—leveraging existing GitHub mechanisms and notification features.

🗨️  Open questions:

  • What would be the most appropriate and descriptive name for the label?

  • Are there risks or downsides to marking items this way that we should consider?

  • Would this help you (as a community member) stay more informed or active?

I’d love to hear your feedback—both from the Academic community and beyond.

Would this help you feel more connected to ongoing technical discussions in OpenSSL?

Any suggestions to refine the idea?