Governance

SnowOps Labs is an open-source project with a maintainer-led governance model. This document defines who decides what, so contributors know how decisions are made and the project keeps a coherent architectural direction.

Roles#

Lead maintainer (project lead)#

@sagar2395 is the lead maintainer and holds final authority over:

• Architecture and the public SDK (pkg/) and scenario schema
• The roadmap and release schedule, and the act of cutting/signing releases
• Licensing, trademark, and governance changes
• Adding or removing maintainers

This authority is intentional and is enforced mechanically via CODEOWNERS + branch protection (the lead maintainer is a required reviewer on engine, CLI, SDK, CI, and licensing paths).

Maintainers#

Trusted contributors invited by the lead maintainer with merge rights in specific areas (e.g. a scenario domain, the platform modules, docs). Listed in MAINTAINERS.md. Maintainers review and merge within their area but do not override architectural decisions reserved to the lead maintainer.

Reviewers / domain code owners#

Contributors trusted to review and approve PRs in a specific directory via CODEOWNERS, without merge authority over the engine/SDK.

Contributors#

Anyone who opens an issue or PR. Contributions require a signed DCO and follow CONTRIBUTING.md.

Decision-making#

• Routine changes (content, docs, bug fixes) merge on code-owner approval + green CI.
• Architectural changes (engine, public SDK, scenario schema, CI policy, licensing) require an RFC under docs/rfcs/ approved by the lead maintainer before implementation.
• Disagreements are resolved by discussion; the lead maintainer is the tie-breaker. Reasoning is documented in the relevant issue/RFC for transparency.

Becoming a maintainer#

Sustained, high-quality contributions in an area, plus good judgement in reviews, may lead to an invitation from the lead maintainer. There is no fixed quota; the bar is trust and consistency.

Changes to governance#

This document and the licensing/trademark policy may only be changed by the lead maintainer, via a PR that the community may comment on.

Relationship to commercial offerings#

SnowOps Labs's core (engine, CLI, SDK, community content) is and will remain fully open source under Apache-2.0. Premium/enterprise content and hosted services live outside this repository and never gate the open core. What was deliberately cut from the open scope, and why, is ADR-0001.