What does "open" mean in OpenQuantumSafe?

[baentsch]

In the past, OQS has been maintained in an open, consensus-oriented manner. All challenges have been openly discussed and resolved by mutual agreement and/or maintainer decision. Most notably, no single company dominated or controlled the project and this arguably was one of its appeals to the wider OSS community. It certainly attracted me personally to the project, along with the strictly contribution-based "meritocracy" approach to governance.

This discussion is to ask for opinions whether this notion of openness shall be retained, or whether it is OK to replace it by a new understanding of openness on display in the first meeting of the "OQS Technical Steering Committee" (TSC) instituted as part of LinuxFoundation taking over the project (listed in the order they occurred in the meeting):

• Non-contributors aiming to represent the project;
• Non-maintainers assuming (co-)chairmanship of OQS in
• secret ballots skipping discussions regarding advantages or disadvantages of the choice voted on;
• Incomplete/selective publication of votes

In addition, LinuxFoundation also

• introduced "members-only" OQS discussion fora outside of github
• refrains from committing to making mailing lists or the discussion fora above permanently accessible to the general public.

Every single line item above runs counter to my personal understanding of "openness" in OSS projects; together they led me to reduce my level of commitment to OQS, which to me indicates the same may be true for others, particularly people not paid by LinuxFoundation.

I very clearly recognize that my understanding of the term may be skewed as I am not a member of LinuxFoundation. I also recognize that my understanding of openness may be considered overly "idealistic" in a world of software controlled by "Big IT", so changing the understanding of what is "open" to the way LinuxFoundation understands it, may actually be beneficial to OQS.

Therefore, looking forward to any further opinions as to which notion of openness this project shall adhere to going forward, e.g., along these lines:

1 Shall discussions, e.g., mailing list archives or meeting recordings, remain visible to everyone ("open"), or require users to register with LinuxFoundation?
2 Shall all potentially controversial elections (of people) or votes (on topics) be held in public ("openly") or by secret ballots with LinuxFoundation only publishing the results?
3 Shall OQS remain to be governed by the people contributing most (committers, "open community") or by the companies paying LinuxFoundation?

Any and all input very welcome, ideally before the next meeting of the OQS TSC as it will inform at least my personal decisions taken there.

And Thanks for everyone still reading: It's a long text for this age and time, but the inputs to this discussion may have a significant impact to the future governance and well-being of the project.

[baentsch]

Related topic at open-quantum-safe/boringssl#114 (comment)