| TL;DR: The OpenSearch Technical Steering Committee expanded voting rights to all active maintainers, launched Security and Search TAGs, established policies for AI-generated code and maintainer activity, advanced FIPS compliance (targeting release 3.6), and completed SPDX license scanning across all repositories. The committee also welcomed seven new and reelected members who will serve through 2028, with a new chair election planned for October. |
Over the past year, the OpenSearch Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has been hard at work behind the scenes. We’ve focused on streamlining governance, strengthening security posture, expanding maintainer support, and creating clear technical pathways for the entire community.
Key accomplishments
Modernized elections
An overhaul of the election process to make project governance more inclusive and transparent.
- Expanded voting base: Voting is no longer restricted to just TSC members. It now includes all active project MAINTAINERS.
- LFX tooling integration: We further adopted Linux Foundation LFX tools to run seamless, reliable elections.
Clarifying governance and community health
A strong open-source project relies on clear guidelines and sustainable maintainership models. To keep things running smoothly, we established several foundational policies.
- Contribution ladder: We implemented a contribution ladder with more prescriptive steps for becoming a maintainer.
- Roll Call process: To manage repositories with inactive maintainers, we added a formal Roll Call process RESPONSIBILITIES.md featuring a one-year inactivity threshold for maintainers to move to emeritus status.
- AI code policy: The TSC officially approved and merged our project policy regarding AI-generated code contributions.
.githubownership: Policy files are now owned by the TSC, design templates belong to the Build TAG, and Code of Conduct assets live centrally in the community repo.
Launched two more TAGs
To provide dedicated domain leadership, the TSC approved and launched two brand-new Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs):
- Security TAG: This TAG provides focused guidance around project security strategy and vulnerability posture.
- Search TAG: Established with a broad scope spanning core search features, AI workflows, and system performance.
Elevating security, compliance and LTS
With OpenSearch powering critical enterprise workloads globally, security and compliance remain top priorities:
- Fossology and SPDX license scanning: We evaluated Linux Foundation’s SPDX scanning programs, and now have a comprehensive review across all repositories, identifying edge-case missing/mismatched licenses and working directly with maintainers to clean them up.
- Long-Term Support (LTS) strategy: The TSC conducted technical reviews on our LTS versioning frameworks prior to Linux Foundation legal finalization.
Accelerating FIPS compliance
For our enterprise and public-sector users, Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance is crucial:
- FIPS index authorization: The TSC drove engagement and gathered community feedback on the critical index authorization RFC.
- Targeting release 3.6: To deliver on this priority, the TSC formally set release 3.6 as the target for full FIPS compliance, directing engineering teams to accelerate their implementation efforts.
Thank you to the outgoing members
With the elections complete, we wanted to express our deepest gratitude to outgoing TSC members who have worked tirelessly to move this project forward.
- Bryan Burkholder (Slack/Salesforce)
- Pallavi Priyadarshini (AWS)
- Shubham Gupta (Uber)
- Yakun Li (Bytedance)
- Yupeng Fu (Apple)
Their expertise, contribution, and leadership have been crucial to our success.
Welcome and congratulations to new and reelected members.
The Technical Steering Committee welcomes the following who will serve through 2028:
- Abdul Muneer Kolarkunnu (NetApp)
- Andrew Ross (AWS) reelected
- Craig Perkins (AWS)
- Jeff Zemerick (Mountain Fog Inc)
- Karsten Schnitter (SAP) reelected
- Kris Freedain (AWS)
- Philip Chan (Uber)
Their experience and perspectives will be important as we work to continue building. Each will serve along with current members in leadership roles through 2027:
- Amitai Stern (Independent)
- Eric Pugh (OpenSource Connections)
- Jonah Kowall (Spacelift)
- Michael Froh (Apple)
- Mikhail Stepura (Apple)
- Nils Bandener (Eliatra)
- Prudhvi Godithi (AWS)
- Samuel Herman (Oracle)
The new committee chair will be elected at the first meeting in October.
As we look forward to the coming work ahead, the Technical Steering Committee will continue to engage across the community and ensure we all continue building the future together.
