Policy on Proposing Technical Policy Changes
This policy represents the way that any additions or changes to the existing policies are proposed, edited, finalized, and approved.
The process for minor changes is described in the Minor Edits section.
Policy Change Proposal
The policy changes or additions are submitted as pull requests in the technical-policies repository on GitHub OpenSSL project. Anyone with a GitHub account can submit a policy change proposal pull request.
Each policy is placed in an individual file in Markdown format in the policies subdirectory.
Any policy change proposal can modify any number of policies as required.
Any policy change proposal SHOULD have a single topic.
The description of the pull request SHOULD provide an overview of the changes and the reasons why the change is proposed.
After the pull request has been created the author MUST announce the policy change proposal on the openssl-project mailing list.
The Review Process
If the submitter is not a member of OTC, an OTC member is selected to watch over the review process and propose the final approval vote.
Adjustments to the change proposal happen via the normal GitHub pull request review interaction. The pull request MUST be opened for at least two weeks after the initial announcement of the change proposal.
The OTC SHOULD discuss the proposal during a meeting.
The OTC SHOULD seek consensus when finalizing the policy change however it is not an absolute requirement.
The review process is fully public in the sense that anyone can add comments to the pull request and see comments made by others.
Withdrawal
To withdraw the change the submitter of the pull request just closes the pull request.
The Approval Process
When there are no further changes proposed on the pull request and the minimum time for which it must be open passes the pull request is marked with the Ready To Vote label. The pull request is frozen for any changes other than typo fixes or minor formatting changes after that.
The policy change is approved by means of a regular OTC vote. If the vote passes, the policy change is approved, otherwise it is rejected.
Approval is marked by labelling the pull request with the Accepted label.
Rejection is marked by labelling the pull request with the Rejected label and closing the pull request without merging.
If the policy change is approved, the pull request is merged to the master branch of the technical-policies repository.
Minor Edits
Minor policy edits that do not change the meaning of the edited policies do not require this voting process. Typical examples of such edits are spelling, grammar, and formatting fixes.
These edits are done via pull requests that are approved by two OTC members where neither of them is the author of the submission. The pull request should be labelled with the minor edit label.
Approved submissions shall only be applied after a 24-hour delay from the approval.