Notice: This policy is a draft version being published for review and comment by CNCF community members. The public comment period will end on July 15, 2022, after which the Interim CNCF Code of Conduct Committee will consider the feedback received prior to adopting a final version of this policy.
Temporary
This interim policy is intended to apply on a temporary interim basis until it is replaced by a more permanent policy as a result of the collaborative process described as Step 2 in the CNCF blog post Upcoming Code of Conduct Updates at CNCF.
Purpose
This interim policy explains the rules for determining which of the following incident response teams has jurisdiction to resolve reported Code of Conduct (CoC) violations:
- The Linux Foundation
- CNCF CoC Committee (“CNCF CoC Committee”)
- Project-level Code of Conduct responders
Jurisdiction of Project CoC Responders
Projects that have their own designated Code of Conduct (CoC) responders have jurisdiction over alleged violations of the CNCF Code of Conduct that occur entirely within the project and can be resolved through a warning, mediation, short-term temporary (not more than 2 weeks) suspension from the project, or removing harmful content from community spaces.
Project-level Code of Conduct responders shall promptly escalate a reported incident to the CNCF CoC Committee if any of the following are true:
- The incident is project-agnostic or impacts multiple CNCF projects.
- Resolution of the incident is likely to require remedies greater than a warning, mediation, temporary suspension (not more than 2 weeks) from the project, or removing harmful content from community spaces.
- All project-level Code of Conduct responders have conflicts of interest.
- Laws or regulations may have been violated.
- The incident or its resolution might expose project leadership, the LF, CNCF, or any involved party to legal risk or liability.
Central Recordkeeping and Notification
To ensure that there is a central repository of data regarding Code of Conduct incidents across all CNCF projects that can be checked to determine whether an accused person is a repeat offender, Project-level incident responders shall promptly notify the CNCF Code of Conduct Committee of any incident that is reported to them even if it is not escalated to the CNCF Code of Conduct Committee. The Project-level incident responders shall provide a brief summary of the nature of the alleged violation and the name of the accused person (but do not have to provide a copy of the full incident report or the identities of the reporters, witnesses, or persons allegedly harmed or targeted), and the CNCF Code of Conduct Committee shall in response notify the project-level Code of Conduct responders if the accused individual has a record of prior violations. When the incident is resolved, the Project-level incident responders shall notify the CNCF Code of Conduct Committee of whether a violation was found and if so, what remediation steps were taken. All information in the central repository shall remain confidential under the Confidentiality Policy.
Jurisdiction of CNCF Code of Conduct Committee
The CNCF CoC Committee has jurisdiction over alleged violations of the CNCF Code of Conduct that meet any of the following criteria:
- The incident occured in a project that does not have its own project-level Code of Conduct enforcement team.
- The incident is project-agnostic or impacts multiple CNCF projects.
- The incident is escalated to the CNCF CoC Committee by a CNCF project.
The CNCF CoC Committee will escalate an incident to the Linux Foundation if any of the following are true:
- All members of the CNCF CoC Committee have conflicts of interest.
- The incident impacts one or more LF communities besides CNCF.
- Laws or regulations may have been violated.
- The incident or its resolution might expose project leadership, the LF, CNCF, or any involved party to legal risk or liability.
If an incident is reported to the CNCF CoC Committee that falls under the jurisdiction of project-level responders, the committee will transfer resolution of the incident to the project-level responders.
Jurisdiction of The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation has jurisdiction over the following incidents:
- Alleged violations of the Linux Foundation Events Code of Conduct
- Incidents that are community-agnostic or that impact multiple LF communities (not just CNCF).
- Incident that are escalated to the Linux Foundation by the CNCF CoC Committee.
Joint Jurisdiction of LF and CNCF
If both LF and CNCF have jurisdiction of an incident as described above, LF and the CNCF CoC Committee will collaborate to jointly resolve the incident. However, if any of the following circumstances applies, the Linux Foundation may take action to resolve the Code of Conduct incident independently:
- Immediate action must be taken in order to prevent harm or otherwise resolve the incident (e.g., removing someone who is threatening violence from an event).
- The incident is community-agnostic or impacts multiple LF communities (not just CNCF).
- The incident exposes LF or CNCF employees to workplace safety risks or other potential harm.
- The incident might involve violation of applicable laws or regulations.
- The incident or its resolution might expose project leadership, the LF, CNCF, or any involved party to legal risk or liability.
Licensing
This document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.