Adopted [Month, Day, Year]
This Workgroup Charter (the “Charter”) sets forth the responsibilities and
procedures for technical contribution to, and oversight of the Caliptra
Workgroup (the “Workgroup”).
This Workgroup is a part of the CHIPS Alliance Project, a Series of LF Projects, LLC. The CHIPS Alliance Technical Steering Committee (“TSC”) created this Workgroup according to the terms of the CHIPS Alliance Technical Steering Committee. On the date noted at the top of this document, the TSC adopted this Charter for the Workgroup. All CHIPS Alliance governing documents and policies, including the CHIPS Alliance Technical Charter, Intellectual Property Policy, and any relevant Code of Conduct will apply to this Workgroup by default. Any Charters, constitutions, or other policies specifically adopted for other CHIPS Alliance workgroups will not apply to this Workgroup.
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The Mission of the Workgroup is to develop and host open source projects with the goals indicated in the “README” file within the Workgroup’s code repository.
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The scope of the Workgroup includes the IP and firmware for an integrated Root of Trust silicon block. The Caliptra RoT block targets datacenter-class SoCs like CPUs, GPUs, DPUs, TPUs. The repositories within this Workgroup provide the documentation, silicon logic, ROM and firmware for implementing a Root of Trust for Measurement (RTM) block inside an SoC. A Caliptra integration provides the SoC with Identity, Measured Boot and Attestation capabilities.
The Workgroup technical governance consists of two types of participants: Technical Advisory Committee members and Volunteer Developers (together, the “Participants”).
The role of the Workgroup Technical Advisory Committee (“TAC”) is to represent the interests of the Participants in the Workgroup and provide active technical leadership for the Workgroup.
The responsibilities of these TAC roles within the Workgroup include:
- Merging pull requests and otherwise exercising the role of “Committers” for the Workgroup as defined in the CHIPS Alliance Technical Charter;
- Facilitating communication and collaboration between TAC members;
- Upholding the policies outlined in this document;
- Organizing public meetings and public technical discussions;
- Sharing any necessary meeting minutes in a public GitHub repository, a public Wiki, or on a public website for the Workgroup within a reasonable period of time after the meeting;
- Responding to technical questions on GitHub;
- Setting the technical criteria for use of the Workgroup marks (if applicable);
- Determining strategy and promoting the adoption of the Workgroup technology through documentation, talks, or other marketing;
- Determining whether additional public, open source repositories should be created for the Workgroup; and
- Determining whether any Workgroup open source collaborations should be wound down and archived on GitHub.
All TAC members exercise the role of Committer as defined in the CHIPS Alliance Technical Charter.
Due to the specific nature of the Caliptra project, there are three classes of TAC members. All members are expected to fulfill the responsibilities outlined above. However, the subject matter of different classes of maintainers is scoped to an area of the Caliptra project:
- RTL Maintainers: these maintainers provide oversight over all contributions to digital logic and silicon design.
- Firmware Maintainers: these maintainers provide oversight over all contributions to immutable ROM (Read Only Memory) code, First Mutable Code (FMC) and runtime firmware (FW).
- Voting Members: Only the Voting TAC Members cast the votes for all decisions below that require a TAC vote. Where TAC quorum may be needed, only a quorum of Voting TAC Members is required. Voting TAC Members are responsible for membership decisions in the TAC.
All members of the TAC share oversight responsibilities for miscellaneous code that does not fall in any of the categories above, and for documentation files.
The initial TAC members of the Caliptra workgroup are listed in the MAINTAINERS file committed in the same commit as this line.
Organizations who have joined the CHIPS Alliance and signed the CHIPS Alliance Participation Agreement and CHIPS Alliance Contributor License Agreement are eligible to nominate developer representatives to join the TAC; upon acceptance of an employee to the Workgroup TAC, an organization becomes a "Caliptra Participating Organization"
At all times, a Caliptra Participating Organization should have one employee included in the TAC for each of the three classes of TAC members: RTL, Firmware, Voting.
Additionally, Volunteer Developers may join the TAC in their individual capacity based on active contribution to the Workgroup open source repositories, subject to a 2/3 approval vote by the existing Voting TAC Members, with 2/3 Voting TAC Members participating in the vote. Such TAC membership decisions will be based only on the technical quality of contributions made to an open source project with Chips Alliance. The metrics for assessing technical quality are determined by the TAC.
This charter establishes a supermajority approval structure for Volunteer Developers seeking to join the TAC. Accordingly, to the extent a Volunteer Developer is deemed a Contributor as defined under the CHIPS Technical charter, the supermajority approval structure supersedes.
All TAC technical discussions will be publicly accessible, either on public Workgroup open source repositories on GitHub, on publicly accessible mailing lists, or on calls that may be joined by any member of the public.
Any member of the TAC may resign by submitting a pull request to remove their name from the membership list document; the resignation will be considered effectively immediately upon submitting the pull request. The TAC may vote to remove a TAC member by a 2/3 vote of the Voting TAC Members, with 2/3 Voting TAC Members participating. A Caliptra Participating Organization may remove its TAC member representative or replace its TAC member representative with an alternative employee representative at any time.
The TAC members will be listed by name, with pseudonym or GitHub username listed optionally, in the MAINTAINERS document within the Workgroup open source repository. Membership changes are reflected by pull requests against the TAC membership list document and relevant CODEOWNERS files (example). GitHub repository roles need to be updated as well.
The TAC shall elect a Chair on an annual basis based on a majority vote by the Voting TAC Members.
The TAC may determine the date of its annual Chair elections, with additional elections as needed if a Chair resigns or otherwise needs to be replaced. The TAC Chair will:
- Represent the Workgroup in CHIPS Alliance Technical Steering Committee meetings per the CHIPS Alliance Technical Charter;
- Represent the Workgroup in discussions with Linux Foundation legal counsel with respect to trademark prosecution for the Workgroup marks (if applicable), on behalf of all Workgroup Participants; and
- Escalate any Code of Conduct concerns to the CHIPS Alliance TSC.
A TAC Chair may resign at any time. A TAC Chair may be removed from the position of Chair by a 2/3 vote of the Voting TAC Members, with at least 2/3 majority of the Voting TAC Members participating in the vote.
A former TAC Chair may continue to be a Participant in the Workgroup if there is no other reason against it, e.g., if no adverse Code of Conduct determination has been made.
The Workgroup welcomes contributions from members of the open source community. All open source contributors who have signed the CHIPS Alliance Contributor License Agreement, or who are covered by a CHIPS Alliance Contributor License Agreement signed by their employer, are welcome as Volunteer Developers.
Volunteer Developers can contribute to the Workgroup open source project via pull requests on GitHub and participation in Workgroup meetings and technical discussions. Volunteer Developers do not have voting rights. Volunteers are encouraged to review and comment on pending pull requests to the Workgroup open source repositories, but they cannot accept pull requests on behalf of the Workgroup.
Not all suggested contributions will be merged by the TAC, and Volunteer Developers will not have commit rights or edit rights for the Workgroup open source project.
The Workgroup will recognize Volunteer Developers if individuals request to be added to a list of Volunteer Developers, to be maintained in the CONTRIBUTORS document in the Workgroup open source repository alongside the list of official TAC members. It is not necessary to be included in the listed individual Volunteer Developers in Workgroup documentation to be considered a Volunteer Developer.
Volunteer Developers are welcome to join all meetings, mailing lists, and discussions on GitHub. Volunteer Developers do not have any required responsibilities to the Workgroup.
Volunteer Developers may become TAC members according to the process outlined regarding the addition of new members to the TAC.
This Charter may be amended by a 2/3 vote of the Voting TAC Members with at least a 2/3 participating majority of listed Voting TAC Members. The upcoming vote shall be announced ahead of time with no less than one week notice. The vote shall be conducted in a meeting with meeting minutes noting which Voting TAC Members were present and how they voted. The minutes will be recorded in this github repo.
TAC votes to amend the Workgroup Charter will be subject to a veto by the CHIPS Alliance Board, to be exercised when a Charter amendment may unacceptably depart from the purpose of the CHIPS Alliance or unreasonably increase risk for CHIPS Alliance participants.