1. Governance, Intellectual Property and Membership
Mike Dolan

2. LF Energy – Governance Considerations
Separation of business governance from technical governance
“Do-ocracy” - Individuals earn community status through technical contribution
Development of common core technology with an ecosystem of participants to contribute to the project and leverage the project’s output; and
Neutral ownership of community assets encourages broad participation.

3. Governance Structure Proposal
Governing Board oversees business decisions
Technical Advisory Council (TAC) coordinates cross-project activities
TAC Responsible for:
Identify areas of cross-project collaboration (e.g. using a common API)
identifies and approves new projects to bring into community (GB approval also req’d)
cross project policies (e.g. security practices)
Standards organization collaboration
Board Responsible for:
Strategy
Budget
Membership
Ecosystem building
Approving new project charters
Committees (Budget, Outreach/Marketing)
Advisory Committees (End User, Academic)
Project 1
TSC
Project 2 TSC
Project ...n TSC
TAC Committees
Dev Community
Dev Community
Dev Community
Each Technical Steering Committee (TSC) composed of the lead maintainers/committers of that project and is ultimately responsible for managing the developer community involved in the project. Projects may come in various types: code, specification, community management, documentation, test/build systems, etc.
TAC may create sub-committees to work on ad hoc or long term initiatives.

4. Governance Structure Proposal
Governing Board oversees business decisions
Technical Advisory Council (TAC) coordinates cross-project activities
TAC Composition:
1 representative from each Premier Member
1 representative from each Project
1 representative from each Premier Member
TAC representative
Elected General Member representatives (1 per 10, up to 3)
Advisors: chairs of the Advisory Committees (Academic, End User)
Project 1
TSC
Project 2 TSC
Project ...n TSC
TAC Committees
Maintainers
Maintainers
Maintainers
Volunteer

5. Intellectual Property Policy Template
Participants acknowledge that the copyright in all new contributions will be retained by the copyright holder as independent works of authorship and that no contributor or copyright holder will be required to assign copyrights to the Project.
Except as described in Section 7.c., all code contributions to the Project are subject to the following:
All new inbound code contributions to the Project must be made using an OSI-approved open source license specified for the Project within the “LICENSE” file within the Project’s code repository (the “Project License”). [or specify license]
All new inbound code contributions must also be accompanied by a Developer Certificate of Origin ( sign-off in the source code system that is submitted through a TSC-approved contribution process which will bind the authorized contributor and, if not self-employed, their employer to the applicable license;
All outbound code will be made available under the Project License. [or specify license]
Documentation will be received and made available by the Project under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (available at
The Project may seek to integrate and contribute back to other open source projects (“Upstream Projects”). In such cases, the Project will conform to all license requirements of the Upstream Projects, including dependencies, leveraged by the Project. Upstream Project code contributions not stored within the Project’s main code repository will comply with the contribution process and license terms for the applicable Upstream Project.
The TSC may approve the use of an alternative license or licenses for inbound or outbound contributions on an exception basis. To request an exception, please describe the contribution, the alternative open source license(s), and the justification for using an alternative open source license for the Project. License exceptions must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the entire TSC. Contributed files should contain license information, such as SPDX short form identifiers, indicating the open source license or licenses pertaining to the file.

6. LF Energy Membership
LF Energy, like other projects of the Linux Foundation, is funded through membership dues and contributed engineering resources
Membership levels include: Premier, General and Associate
Government entities, academic and nonprofit organizations can join as Associate Members

7. LF Energy Membership Tiers
Premier:
Appoint one (1) representative to the Governing Board
Appoint one (1) representative as a voting member in any subcommittee or activity of the Governing Board
Enjoy most prominent placement in displays of membership
Access to LF’s invitation-only Open Source Leadership Summit
Ongoing, individual engagement with executive director and staff
General:
Participate as one of up to three (3) General representatives to the Gov. Board (1 representative per 10 GMs)
Earn a TSC position through leadership in the community
Enjoy prominent placement in displays of membership
Ongoing engagement with executive director and staff
Associate
Limited to academic, nonprofit and government entity organizations
Entitled to identify their organization as an Academic or Non-Profit supporting the mission with other benefits determined by the Governing Board
No fee, no membership required
Non-members may participate fully in the technical community with contributions, earn committer, or TSC/TAC roles on merit.

8. Membership and Participation Levels
Membership Level
LF Member Annual Fee
Board Seat
TSC Seat
Outreach Committee
Suggested Minimum FTE*
Notes
Premier
Flat fee: $150k
Yes 1
Two year minimum commitment
General
$5k-50k based on org size1
(Possible)
1 per every 10 General members
Based on Merit
N/A
1 year commitment
Associate
No fee
(Provisional at start-up)
Limited to academic, nonprofit and government entity organizations
General Member Annual Fee Scale
$50K - > 5,000 employees
$30K - 1,000 – 4,999 employees $20K – 1,000 employees $10K – 200 employees
$5K - < 100 employees
* FTE = Full Time Equivalent (e.g. 2 employees each spend 50% of their time on a project). This suggestion is meant to provide a minimum resource investment to ensure members are contributing technically. Most projects see much higher investment of resources than the minimum requirement.