Establish OSS Committee Charter (closes #9)

[michaeloboyle]

Summary

Adds the Open Source Committee Charter as version-controlled markdown at docs/operating-guidelines/committee-charter.md for #9. The charter lives in the repo and is amended via pull request, not as a Google Doc, per the June 10 decision to prioritize GitHub over standalone documents.

The charter is container #5 (Committee Operating Guidelines) in the 2026-05-13 five-container scope model. It flows from the Agentics Foundation mission and vision (agenticsorg/.github profile README), sits above the mechanical intake state machine, and above the day-to-day Operating Principles (#25).

What it codifies

1. Establishment and Authority - standing Board committee (Bylaws Article X)
2. Mission - steward high-quality open source projects advancing the agentic AI ecosystem; a governance and signal-filtering body, not a dev team
3. Scope - five request categories; what is in and out of scope
4. Membership and the Chair - roster from data/committee-config.json (authoritative); Chair has no tie-break/super vote
5. Adoption Tiers - T1 Foundation-Owned / T2 Foundation-Endorsed / T3 Community-Associated (Define AF OSS tiers (naming and definitions) #10)
6. Scoring Rubric - five criteria, 0-5 each, 25-point total; rubric is a spec, never bent to pass a project
7. Decision and Voting Model - two sequential votes (escalation, then validation), simple majority, conflict-of-interest handling (mechanical submitter exclusion + voluntary /coi)
8. Retraction Authority - grounds, re-scoring, vote
9. Records, Transparency, Decision Recording - issues over documents; AF-GOV doc vs ADR vs tracking issue convention
10. Security and Vulnerability Handling - private reporting channel, coordinated disclosure, pre-review risk screening (Zero Day Protocols #13)
11. Contribution, License, CLA, DCO Posture - DCO default for ordinary contributions; separate CLA/IP instrument required for donations (gates #33)
12. Meetings and Cadence - Wednesdays 13:00 ET
13. Operating Principle - humans judge, agents execute (AF-GOV-002)
14. Amendments - by PR; Board-reserved matters need Board ratification

Handle resolution notes

• Robert Ranson uses @rcraw, matching the authoritative data/committee-config.json.
• Kenneth Carter (Legal Counsel) is referenced as plain text "Kenneth Carter", not an @mention. He is not in committee-config.json (he is advisory, not a voting member) and I could not verify a real GitHub handle. The @kenneth account exists but is a different person, so no speculative ping was posted.

Open questions for committee review

These are deliberately unresolved in the charter and are the substantive decisions for the committee:

1. Chair tie-break. Draft gives the Chair no tie-breaking vote (ties carry to the next meeting). Confirm, or grant the Chair a casting vote.
2. Quorum precision. The governance doc says "simple majority of active committee members" but does not define "active." Adopt a concrete definition (e.g. attended at least one of the last three meetings) or a dynamic quorum from committee-config.json (Establish OSS Committee Charter (closes #9) #26)?
3. Good-standing verification timing. Verify member good standing at submission, at review, or both?
4. Tier names. Confirm Foundation-Owned / Foundation-Endorsed / Community-Associated, or adopt the proposed Owned / Endorsed / Affiliated simplification (Define AF OSS tiers (naming and definitions) #10).
5. CLA vs DCO default. Draft proposes DCO for ordinary contributions and a separate CLA/IP-transfer instrument for donations. Confirm with Legal Counsel (Kenneth Carter).
6. Confidentiality model. Resolve Establish OSS Operating Principles (closes #25) #27 (are scores confidential, summary only, or open?) and align Section 9 to the outcome.
7. Nick Ruest dual role. Nick chairs the Operations Committee and is active on OSS. Confirm whether he is a voting OSS member or an external reviewer.

Refs #9 (ratification is a separate committee act; this PR does not auto-close the issue)

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds a version-controlled Open Source Committee Charter to document committee mission, scope boundaries, membership authority, voting/COI model, records conventions, and security/contribution posture, aligning with the “governance-as-code” approach described in issue #9.

Changes:

• Introduces docs/operating-guidelines/committee-charter.md as the canonical OSS Committee Charter.
• Defines adoption tiers, scoring rubric, decision/voting sequence, retraction authority, and decision-recording rules.
• Documents security/vulnerability handling posture and DCO/CLA/IP-transfer approach for contributions vs donations.

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[michaeloboyle]

Addressed Copilot review feedback in d000d52:

• Frontmatter (L1): Restored a minimal author/maintainer YAML frontmatter block (author + author_github @michaeloboyle, maintainer + maintainer_github @michaeloboyle, status, target Establish OSS Committee Charter #9), per the issue Establish OSS Committee Charter #9 acceptance criteria. Kept it lean, no source-material cruft.
• docs/ADRs/ path (L202): Reworded the decision-recording convention so it no longer points at a non-existent directory: an ADR is now described as living "in a docs/ADRs/ directory, to be created when the first ADR is written." No empty placeholder directory added.

Verified zero em dashes and valid YAML frontmatter.