# Governance of the Paralus project

Welcome! We are so glad you're here.

Before we get started, please be aware this is a living document. As our project grows, we expect to add additional roles and groups and expand this document and our governance model to help keep everything running smoothly. If you’d like to contribute to this document and the governance plans it describes, go ahead and create a new GitHub Issue and let us know.

It’s our intention to be as transparent and open as possible. We do our best to ensure a positive experience for our community. To that end, we ask everyone in the community to adhere to the [CNCF Code of Conduct](https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/master/code-of-conduct.md).

## Who and What

Paralus has been created and open sourced by [Rafay](https://rafay.co).

Our governance structure consists of maintainers and contributors, with one maintainer designated as the project leader. After one year, the project leader is elected annually by the maintainers in consensus based on their ongoing contribution to the growth and development of the project.

The project leader has to:

- Guide the project direction
- Manage the feature roadmap
- Accept/reject major feature changes from contributors
- Perform other Maintainer tasks

Maintainers:

- Submit, review, comment, label, and approve issues and pull requests
- Participate in code reviews and attend project meetings
- Test code and merge code changes
- Manage templates
- Contribute to the project Release Notes
- Answer questions from users and contributors

Contributors:

- Submit Issues, Pull Requests, and code reviews.

Users become contributors by submitting Pull Requests and Issues, and engaging in meetings and discussions on [Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/paralus/shared_invite/zt-1a9x6y729-ySmAq~I3tjclEG7nDoXB0A). Contributors who wish to become maintainers can be nominated by other contributors or maintainers, or nominate themselves.

## Updates and releases

Approved feature requests and bug fixes whose code has been tested and approved are merged and published as part of an official release at least once a month. Code can be approved by any two maintainers in consensus, or by the project leader.

## How you can contribute

We’re always looking for contributors and maintainers to help guide the project and grow the project! There are a few ways you can get involved as a contributor or a maintainer:

- Review and comment on open Issues
- Submit new Issues with feature requests and bug fixes
- Create Pull Requests

Make sure to review the `CONTRIBUTING.md` file before making changes. If you have any questions, concerns, or would just like to chat, catch us on [Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/paralus/shared_invite/zt-1a9x6y729-ySmAq~I3tjclEG7nDoXB0A)!
