Concerns about Kubernetes Community newcomers
Sarah Novotny
Hi All,
The Kubernetes community prioritizes safety, transparency and authenticity through RESPECT of all people and their contributions to the project.
Issues raised since Friday about potential new contributors have become pressing enough to warrant both IMMEDIATE action and long term planning. We prize transparency and openness and so are communicating what we can now.
Regarding the concern of specific new members to our community who may have exhibited behaviors not in accordance with our Code of Conduct in other communities, please know we take enforcement of our code of conduct seriously. Reports by our community members of current and prior bad behaviors will be weighed as part of our action, if any.
I [Sarah] am gathering information today and tomorrow with an intent to make a decision regarding any action. If you have relevant first hand experiences, please reach out to me directly (sarahn...@google.com). My decision will be reviewed in 6-12 months by the Code of Conduct Committee outlined below.
As a sustainable response to any future Code of Conduct concerns, the Governance Bootstrap group have decided that the Kubernetes project will immediately create a Code of Conduct Committee and the Kubernetes project, through the recommendations of the committee, will have exclusive rights to remove people from our community via temporary or permanent revocations of, but not limited to, GitHub access, git commit access, mailing list access, slack organization access, etc. The Code of Conduct Committee will also help guide community norms on lesser infractions. Volunteers for this committee will be vetted by the bootstrap group in the absence of the ongoing and community elected Steering Committee expected as an outcome of the Bootstrap process we're undergoing now.
We know that all of the Kubernetes community supports efforts to keep K8s a respectful and gracious community. Thank you,
Brendan Burns
Brandon Philips
Brian Grant
Clayton Coleman
Joe Beda
Sarah Novotny
Tim HockinSarah Novotny
Thank you for your patience while we addressed issues raised about a specific community newcomer. We take any such matters extremely seriously and are committed to resolving these issues in the best interest of the communities involved.
We have mutually agreed with this person that they won’t participate in the Kubernetes community at this time. This includes resources of the community, including but not limited to, Slack, mailing lists, SIGs, and GitHub organizations. In the event that this person wants to participate in the Kubernetes Community at some later date, they are welcome to reach out to the Code of Conduct Committee which will perform further investigation. We appreciate everyone who shared reports with us relevant to this incident and they will be considered in any further investigation by the committee.
Our commitment to everyone is a Kubernetes community that is an excellent place to work. To do that we rely on community norms and expectations laid out in the Kubernetes Community Code of Conduct. We have a responsibility to create a community that is respectful, professional and gracious. And, we know that all of the Kubernetes community supports these efforts.
As an additional note: Through this process we learned is that the Code of Conduct reporting and escalation paths aren't well documented and we need a larger Code of Conduct Committee.
Until we can improve please follow the private escalation path in the Kubernetes Code of Conduct for any Code of Conduct report; taking reports to other forums can cause delays to resolution and confound clear actions from the committee. To make this escalation path more transparent, one of the first tasks of the new Code of Conduct Committee will be to establish SLOs and reference timelines for responses and actions, and to clarify the scope where the Code of Conduct applies.
Please reply to Sarah Novotny <sarahn...@google.com> or any member of the Bootstrap Committee below if you have questions or concerns.
Thank You,
Tim Hockin
Sarah Novotny
Joe Beda
Clayton Coleman
Brian Grant
Brendan Burns
Brandon Philips