Foundation Advisory Committee reorganization proposal

Important note: this proposal only applies to the OpenSSL Foundation advisory committees. The OpenSSL Corporation committees are organized separately and this proposal does not apply to them.

In 2024, OpenSSL announced a new organizational structure. Both the OpenSSL Corporation and OpenSSL Foundation opened two new advisory bodies selected from our communities. The Business Advisory Committee (BAC) focused on what the Foundation would do, and the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) focused on how it would do those things. The intention was to leave space for both technical and non-technical feedback.

On the whole this plan has worked very well for the Foundation. We meet with each committee once a month and the feedback has been invaluable. In addition, we regularly get reports from committee members about how they have represented OpenSSL within their communities. 

That said, we think there are few things that aren’t working so well:

• In the most recent BAC election, we only had representation from 4 of the 6 communities. In one case this was because the election didn’t reach a quorum and in the other case we simply did not have anyone nominate themselves.
• Even though the committees include different people, we often found both gave similar feedback. It can be difficult to draw sharp lines between the business and technical considerations.
• Since each committee is reformed once a year when new representatives are elected, it’s hard to maintain continuity.

So the OpenSSL Foundation is proposing a reorganization. We invite our communities to give feedback on this discussion on the General Discussion forum.

Proposed Reorganization

After the next election in September, we propose merging the BAC and TAC into one advisory committee. In the new structure, each community would have two representatives with offsetting two year terms. That would mean newly elected representatives (one from each community) would serve until September 2028. Meanwhile, the current BAC representatives would have their terms extended to September 2027. From then on, half the committee would be up for election each September.

We think this addresses the primary issues with the current advisory committee structure. Election fatigue seems to be a reason we failed to get full representation, so by having just one election for the Foundation each year, we believe there will be more participation. Overlapping two year terms will naturally give the new committee continuity. Having one committee should also reduce confusion between the Foundation and Corporation governance structures.

‍Our values include “We believe that our governance and output should be transparent and open.” Therefore this is a proposed change in the OpenSSL Foundation governance. Your feedback matters. Based on the feedback from the current Foundation BAC and TAC we believe this proposal is broadly moving in the right direction.

Timeline

• April 2026—Present this plan to the BAC and TAC (already done)
• May 2026—Blog post and general discussion presenting the proposal to the OpenSSL communities (this post)
• June 2026—Blog post explaining the change based on community feedback
• September 2026—Begin the election process for the even year term (This will be the former TAC members.)
• October 2026—Newly elected representatives join
• September 2027—Odd year term elections

Photo by Peter Kostov on Unsplash