Why Stewardship
At FOSSHive, stewards hold responsibility for outcomes … not just tasks. They lead with transparency, strengthen our Free & Open Source Software & Hardware (FOSS H) culture, and ensure decisions serve the community, clients, and the commons. Stewardship may be a stand-alone path or a bridge toward partnership and (optional) C-shares.
Core Expectations (for every steward)
Community first: Act in the interest of contributors, users, and clients; avoid conflicts of interest.
Transparency: Document decisions, proposals, and metrics in public repos/spaces.
Open practice: Use FOSS tools; publish code, docs, and roadmaps under suitable OSI/OSH licenses.
Inclusion & safety: Model our Code of Conduct; ensure respectful collaboration.
Measurable outcomes: Define quarterly OKRs/KPIs and report progress.
Reliability: Minimum cadence—weekly check-ins; respond to critical issues within agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Time guideline: 2–6 hours/week per stewardship role (varies by scope and phase).
Steward Roles
1) Project Steward
Purpose: Ship high-quality releases for a product, module, or service line.
Responsibilities
Maintain roadmap, backlog, and release plans (Taiga/Redmine).
Own acceptance criteria; run reviews and RFCs.
Coordinate cross-repo changes and versioning.
Track quality metrics (tests, issue aging, cycle time, user feedback).
Decision rights: Prioritization within scope; release gates.
2) Mentorship Steward
Purpose: Grow people … accelerate onboarding and capability.
Responsibilities
Run onboarding cohorts; maintain starter issues and learning paths (Moodle/Open edX).
Pair programming/reviews; define mentoring norms.
Maintain a skills matrix; recommend advancement to steward/partner tracks.
Decision rights: Sign-off on contributor graduation to “ready for production” status.
3) Community Steward
Purpose: Make participation easy, safe, and vibrant.
Responsibilities
Moderate forums/Matrix/Rocket.Chat; enforce Code of Conduct.
Organize meetups, hack days, and contributor spotlights.
Maintain contributor guides, templates, and community analytics.
Decision rights: CoC enforcement within policy; event calendar ownership.
4) Governance & Policy Steward
Purpose: Keep rules legible and fair; align with FOSS H values.
Responsibilities
Maintain governance docs, voting procedures, and RACI maps. R (Responsible), A (Accountable), C (Consulted), I (Informed).
Run public decision logs and proposal cycles (ADR (Architectural Decision Record)/RFC (Request for Comment)).
Oversee licensing compliance (software + hardware Bill of material (BOM)) and attribution.
Decision rights: Validate process compliance; escalate constitutional changes to votes.
5) Privacy & Security Steward
Purpose: Protect users, data, and supply chain.
Responsibilities
Threat modeling, privacy impact assessments, and hardening guides.
Coordinate security triage; manage disclosure and patch releases.
Own backups/restore drills and incident post-mortems.
Decision rights: Emergency authority for risk mitigation within policy.
6) Infrastructure/DevOps Steward
Purpose: Keep services reliable, portable, and cost-sensible.
Responsibilities
Operate CI/CD, packaging, and reproducible builds.
Maintain IaC for self-hosted stacks (Nextcloud, OpenCATS, Metabase, etc.).
SLOs/SLIs monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana), capacity planning, and cost reports.
Decision rights: Platform standards, images, and deployment windows.
7) Documentation & Education Steward
Purpose: Turn knowledge into leverage.
Responsibilities
Keep docs current (user/dev/ops); champion doc-as-code.
Produce tutorials, labs, and certification rubrics.
Track learn-through rates and doc usability.
Decision rights: Documentation standards and publishing cadence.
8) Client/Employer Steward
Purpose: Align placements and projects with FOSS H practice.
Responsibilities
Vet organizations on FOSS H readiness (tooling, licensing, governance).
Define role descriptions that honor digital autonomy and open workflows.
Collect client feedback, publish impact case studies.
Decision rights: Recommend/decline engagements based on FOSS H criteria.
Performance & Recognition
Quarterly review:
OKRs/KPIs (e.g., release predictability, onboarding time, CoC incidents resolved, uptime, MTTR).
Community health (new contributors retained, PR time-to-merge, event participation).
Impact notes posted publicly.
Recognition:
Public steward badge on profile; featured steward stories.
Eligibility for Partner track and C-share consideration after sustained impact (typically 2–3 review cycles).
How to Become a Steward
Apply or be nominated with a short scope statement and the KPIs you’ll own.
Trial period (6–12 weeks): deliver 1–2 concrete outcomes; document decisions.
Confirmation vote by relevant stewards/governance circle.
Onboarding kit: access, templates, reporting cadence, and mentorship.
Tools We Use
Comms: Rocket.Chat/Matrix, Jitsi.
Quality & Ops: CI/CD, Prometheus/Grafana, Sentry, Metabase.
Governance: RFC/ADR repos, decision logs, public roadmaps.
Call to Stewardship
Ready to lead with transparency and impact?
→ Apply to become a Steward (form) • Read the Code of Conduct • View current RFCs & roadmaps
