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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: post |
| 3 | +title: "Scaling for the Future: Evolving Kroxylicious Governance" |
| 4 | +date: 2026-03-04 00:00:00 +0000 |
| 5 | +author: "Tom Bentley" |
| 6 | +author_url: "https://github.com/tombentley" |
| 7 | +categories: |
| 8 | +--- |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +Hot on the heels of [the release of Kroxylicious 0.19.0](../2026-03-04-release-0_19_0/) we have some other news to share. |
| 11 | +We are excited to announce a shift in how we manage the project, partly based on the proven model used by the Apache Software Foundation. |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +We’ve always believed that open-source success is built on transparency, community trust, and a shared vision. |
| 14 | +The project continues to evolve, and our governance model needs to change with it while ensuring the project remains truly vendor-neutral. |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +## Decoupling Roles: Introducing Committers and Project Managers |
| 17 | + |
| 18 | +Previously, we relied on a flat "Code Owner" structure. |
| 19 | +While this worked well in the early days, we realised it was starting to make it harder to scale the project: |
| 20 | +In order to grow, we are going to need more people able to review and merge contributions. |
| 21 | +But those people might not always be interested, or able to make a commitment to helping ensure the project’s long term sustainability. |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +To solve this, we have split these duties into two distinct roles: |
| 24 | +* **Committers** focus on code quality and technical output. |
| 25 | + They have write access to our repositories and are responsible for reviewing and merging contributions. |
| 26 | +* **Project Managers** (PMs) focus on the long-term health and sustainability of the project. |
| 27 | + They manage the governance files, handle community elections, and ensure the project remains aligned with its goals and deal with our interactions with the CommonHaus foundation. |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +We hope that by decoupling these roles, we’ll be better able to scale our number of Committers to match our review volume without burdening them with administrative overhead. |
| 30 | +It creates a clearer pathway for contributors to take on leadership roles based on their interests, whether that’s deep technical work or project stewardship. |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +These changes are already reflected in our updated [`GOVERNANCE.md`](https://github.com/kroxylicious/.github/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md). |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +## Moving Beyond `CODEOWNERS` |
| 35 | + |
| 36 | +We are also moving away from using the GitHub `CODEOWNERS` file to enforce directory-level restrictions. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | +We trust Committers to know the limits of their expertise and to pull in the right subject matter experts when a PR spans areas outside their immediate knowledge. |
| 39 | +This reduces the friction of managing complex ownership files and avoids the pitfalls of stale ownership definitions that don't match the current team structure. |
| 40 | + |
| 41 | +## Strengthening Our Organizational Memory |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +As we grow, we need to ensure that important technical decisions aren't lost in the temporary nature of our Slack channels. |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +While Slack remains our home for quick, day-to-day conversation, we’ve decided that mailing lists are the least worst way to share and record formal technical discussions and voting. |
| 46 | +This ensures that our decision-making process is archived, searchable, and – most importantly – publicly verifiable. |
| 47 | + |
| 48 | +The kroxylicious-dev is the list we’re going to use for discussions and directions by developers, including contributors and committers. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +* You can read and subscribe to the list on [google groups](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/kroxylicious-dev). |
| 51 | +* Alternatively, you can subscribe by sending an empty email to [kroxylicious-dev+subscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:kroxylicious-dev+subscribe@googlegroups.com), |
| 52 | +* and unsubscribe by sending an empty email to [kroxylicious-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:kroxylicious-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com) |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +The project managers will use a private list, but only for communication that needs to remain private. |
| 55 | +You can contact them by email to [kroxylicious-pms@googlegroups.com](mailto:kroxylicious-pms@googlegroups.com). |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +## Building Community Connection |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +Governance isn't just about documents and voting; it’s about people. |
| 60 | +We want to ensure that our contributors feel connected to the project's direction and to each other. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +To facilitate more direct and synchronous collaboration, we are launching a regular Community Call that anyone can join. |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +The Kroxylicious community is spread around the world, and we want to be as inclusive as possible. |
| 65 | +In particular, we didn't want the meeting to always be in the middle of the night for someone in an unfortunate timezone. |
| 66 | +To support this, while the meeting cadence is every two weeks, the meeting time will alternate by ±12 hours every other call. |
| 67 | +But timezones and daylight savings time makes it a bit tricky to describe in a blog post. |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +You can see the time of upcoming meetings [on the website](https://kroxylicious.io/join-us/community-call/), or you can simply [add the meeting schedule](webcal://kroxylicious.io/join-us/community-call/community-call.ics) to your calendar app. |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +## What’s Next? |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +We’re excited to continue building Kroxylicious in an environment that is open, inclusive, and built to last. |
| 74 | +Check out the updated docs and let us know what you think! |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | + |
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