Fedora Governance is based on a representative, community-based membership model incrementally rewarding members who have made the greatest commitments to the project. Fedora is governed by a single Governance Group who is responsible for maintaining the overall Vision & Strategy of the program while acting as liaison between the program team and the community-at-large. This page outlines the roles and responsibilities of the group and its members.

Note: As per a decision made by sitting Fedora Steering Group members in March 2022, the former Leadership and Steering groups have been combined into one group. Each election cycle, the current sitting members of the group will re-evaluate this decision based on current Governance activities. 

The current program structure is as follows:

The Fedora Governance Group

The Fedora Governance Group is made up of the following:

• Members that contribute over $20,000 annually to the project
• Elected representatives from institutions making financial contributions to the program via Fedora Membership
• Individuals from institutions who contribute at least 0.5 FTE in-kind developers
• Active contributing community members with capacity to participate in Governance in addition to community contributions

See In-Kind Guidelines for more information. 

The Governance Group approves the overall priorities and strategic direction of the Fedora program by:

• Approving the annual budget allocation and any modifications
• Approving the product roadmap
• Approving the strategic direction
• Voting on key decisions presented by the Program Team or brought forward by the community
• Helping to raise funds and secure other resources on behalf of the project

Commitment: Governance Group Members serve 2-year terms once elected. See a list of current members and their status. The Fedora Governance Group meets every second month. Additional participation may be required as determined by Governance activities and priorities.

Term Dates: A Governance year runs from September 1 to August 31 each calendar year.

Current serving members and their term dates can be found here.

Past Leadership Group members can be found here.

Governance Group Chair

The Fedora Governance Group will elect one Chair who will serve in a leadership capacity for the entire group. Prior to serving a one year term as Fedora Governance Chair, the individual will serve one year as Chair-Elect. The Chair-Elect must be a member of Fedora Governance. This individual is nominated by their peers within Governance and then elected through an official voting procedure.

The Fedora Governance Chair has the following duties:

• Serves as chair-elect for one year prior to beginning their term as chair.
• Chairs the Governance Group meetings (virtually or in-person), ensuring an appropriate agenda
• Collects and channels feedback on Lyrasis-employed staff supporting Fedora for annual and ad hoc performance reviews
• Represents the community in discussions/negotiations with Lyrasis, as appropriate
• Contributes to, and advises on the creation of and final validation of the Fedora program’s annual budget, strategic plan and operating plan
• Ensures Governance members contribute resources (financial and human) and energy to the project consistent with a member-driven, member-supported open-source project

Lyrasis-Employed Program Team Members

Program Manager

The Product Manager is funded by and accountable to the Fedora community. The Program Manager has the following duties:

• Set the long-term vision for Fedora 
• Serve as strategic liaison to the governance group, community members, service providers, and other stakeholders. 
• Work with the governance group to secure funding and in-kind contributions from Fedora stakeholders
• Perform local and international outreach to institutions, government organizations, funding agencies, and others
• Work together with the Fedora Technical Resource to oversee key project processes
• Maintain project budget

Technical Manager/Technical Lead/Technical Developer

For the stability and continuity of the technical platform, the Fedora program employs a technical resource. This individual has the following duties:

• Establish technical vision, goals, and priorities for the Fedora platform
• Coordinate community software development effort around above priorities
• Participation in weekly technical meeting
• Support community engagement in technical discussions
• Support community understanding of Fedora through workshops, conferences, etc
• Ensure regular, production-quality Fedora releases
• Support community initiatives in the broader Fedora ecosystem
• Keep governance abreast of developments and needs
• Cultivate vibrant developer community

Additional Roles

Leadership Group Ambassadors

The Fedora Leadership Group has created a role called “Ambassador” for select group members who are invited by the group to share their wisdom and experience and serve in a non-voting capacity.

 The following rules apply to Governance Group Ambassadors:

1. Ambassadors must be nominated by a current member of the Governance Group
2. The nomination must be seconded by another member of the Governance Group
3. Once a candidate has been nominated, the Governance Group will have two weeks to discuss the nomination and raise any issues 
4. At the end of the two week discussion period, a private vote will be held
5. A simple majority vote will approve the candidate as an Ambassador
6. The Steering Group will serve as arbiter in case of a tie vote or other issues that may arise
7. Ambassadors will serve a three year term, with the possibility for renewal
8. If the need arises, ambassadors can be removed from the Governance Group via a motion from a member of the Governance Group followed by a vote

Technical Liaisons

In order to facilitate closer alignment with the Islandora and Samvera communities from a technical perspective, a technical liaison from each community will be appointed to the Fedora Governance Group in a non-voting capacity. Each community will be asked to put forward one technical liaison based on the following criteria.

A technical liaison should:

1. Have broad technical knowledge of their community’s application framework
2. Understand the roadmap for the application framework
3. Understand how technical changes in Fedora may impact the application framework, and vice-versa
4. Have the endorsement, support, and trust of the leadership/governance group of the partner community

See the Project Team for other groups contributing to the Fedora Project