valkey/GOVERNANCE.md

Project Governance

The Valkey project is managed by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) composed of the maintainers of the Valkey repository. The Valkey project includes all of the current and future repositories under the Valkey-io organization. Committers are defined as individuals with write access to the code within a repository. Maintainers are defined as individuals with full access to a repository and own its governance. Both maintainers and committers shall be clearly listed in the MAINTAINERS.md file in a given project's repository. Maintainers of other repositories within the Valkey project are not members of the TSC unless explicitly added.

Technical Steering Committee

The TSC is responsible for oversight of all technical, project, approval, and policy matters for Valkey.

The TSC members are listed in the MAINTAINERS.md file in the Valkey repository.

At any time, no more than one third (1/3) of the TSC members may be employees, contractors, or representatives of the same organization or affiliated organizations. For the purposes of this document, “organization” includes companies, corporations, universities, research institutes, non-profits, governmental institutions, and any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. If, at any time, the 1/3 organization limit is exceeded (for example, due to changes in employment, company acquisitions, or organizational affiliations), the TSC shall be notified as soon as possible. The TSC must promptly take action to restore compliance, which may include removing or reassigning members in accordance with the procedures outlined in the Termination of Membership section. The TSC shall strive to resolve the situation within 30 days of notification, and document the steps taken to restore compliance.

The TSC shall appoint a Chair responsible for organizing TSC meetings. If the TSC Chair is removed from the TSC (or the Chair steps down from that role), it is the responsibility of the TSC to appoint a new Chair.

The TSC may, at its discretion, add or remove members who are not maintainers of the main Valkey repository. The TSC may, at its discretion, add or remove maintainers from other repositories within the Valkey project.

Voting

The TSC shall strive for all decisions to be made by consensus. While explicit agreement of the entire TSC is preferred, it is not required for consensus. Rather, the TSC shall determine consensus based on their good faith consideration of a number of factors, including the dominant view of the TSC and nature of support and objections. The TSC shall document evidence of consensus in accordance with these requirements. If consensus cannot be reached, the TSC shall make the decision by a vote.

A vote shall also be called when an issue or pull request is marked as a major decision, which are decisions that have a significant impact on the Valkey architecture or design.

Technical Major Decisions

Technical major decisions include:

• Fundamental changes to the Valkey core datastructures
• Adding a new data structure or API
• Changes that affect backward compatibility
• New user visible fields that need to be maintained
• Adding or removing a new external library such as a client or module to the project when it affects runtime behavior

Technical major decisions shall be approved by a simple majority vote whenever one can be obtained. If a simple majority cannot be reached within a two-week voting period, and no TSC member has voted against, the decision may instead be approved through explicit “+2” support from at least two TSC members, recorded on the relevant issue or pull request. If the pull request author or issue proposer is a TSC member, their +1 counts toward the +2. If any TSC member casts a negative vote, the decision must follow the simple majority voting process and cannot be approved through +2. Once a technical major decision has been approved through the +2 mechanism, any subsequent concerns shall be raised through a new major decision process; +2 approvals are not retracted directly.

Governance Major Decisions

Governance major decisions include:

• Adding TSC members or involuntary removal of TSC members
• Modifying this governance document
• Delegation of maintainership for projects or governance authority
• Creating, modifying, or removing roles within the Valkey project
• Any change that alters voting rules, TSC responsibilities, or project oversight
• Structural changes to the TSC, including composition limits

Governance major decisions shall require approval by a super-majority vote of at least two thirds (2/3) of the entire TSC.

Any member of the TSC can call a vote with reasonable notice to the TSC, setting out a discussion period and a separate voting period. Any discussion may be conducted in person or electronically by text, voice, or video. The discussion shall be open to the public, with the notable exception of discussions involving embargoed security issues or the addition or removal of maintainers, which will be private. In any vote, each voting TSC member will have one vote. The TSC shall give at least two weeks for all members to submit their vote. Except as specifically noted elsewhere in this document, decisions by vote require a simple majority vote of all voting members. If a vote results in a tie, the status quo is preserved. It is the responsibility of the TSC Chair to help facilitate the voting process as needed to make sure it completes within the voting period.

Termination of Membership

A maintainer's access (and accordingly, their position on the TSC) will be removed if any of the following occur:

• Involuntary Removal: Removal via the Governance Major Decision voting process.
• Resignation: Written notice of resignation to the TSC.
• Unreachable Member: If a member is unresponsive for more than six months, the remaining active members of the TSC may vote to remove the unreachable member by a simple majority.

Technical direction for other Valkey projects

The TSC may delegate decision making for other projects within the Valkey organization to the maintainers responsible for those projects. Delegation of decision making for a project is considered a Governance Major Decision. Projects within the Valkey organization must indicate the individuals with commit permissions by updating the MAINTAINERS.md within their repositories.

The TSC may, at its discretion, overrule the decisions made by other projects within the Valkey organization, although they shall show restraint in doing so.

License of this document

This document may be used, modified, and/or distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license.