The libgit2 project has applied to join the Software Freedom Conservancy as a member project, and we have been offered membership in the SFC. The Software Freedom Conservancy exists to provide a (non-profit) home and infrastructure for free and open-source projects, and will help us take care of the non-code issues that the project has. For example: they can act in a financial or legal capacity for us. Importantly, the git project is part of the Software Freedom Conservancy already, so this is a natural continuation of our relationship with both the git project and the SFC.

We will be negotiating an agreement similar to this example: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ConservancyFSATemplate.pdf when we join.

Importantly, we need to create a project leadership structure. Throughout the course of the libgit2 project we have not had a formal leadership structure documented, though in the last few years we have had a somewhat assumed leadership committee of Carlos Martín-Nieto and Patrick Steinhardt, and me.

Joining the Software Freedom Conservancy as a member project requires us to clearly document a leadership structure. This leadership committee will oversee the non-technical aspects of libgit2. This is not a committee that decides when - or whether - pull requests get merged: instead it will handle the financial and legal aspects of the project. Ensuring that the (thankfully few) bills get paid, etc.

To give you an idea of the things that the git project worries about, peff has posted status updates for 2017 and 2018.

We are proposing that libgit2 adopt a project leadership committee that consists of:

• 5 people who have an interest in the project
• People who are contributors to the project (either writing code, documentation, testing, etc) or are users of the project. We want to encourage people who use and rely on libgit2 to take a leadership role and ensure that the interests of end-users are represented.
• No more than two people from the same company can be on the board. We want to both ensure that libgit2 is an independent project and not controlled by a single company, while ensuring that core contributors have an opportunity to move between employers. (As one would expect: many of the contributors have worked at a small number of companies. Concretely, Carlos and Patrick have both worked at the same company, Carlos and I have worked together at two separate companies.)

But having only three people in the de facto leadership committee means that we need to grow our committee. I propose that we take nominations: if you are a user or contributor and you think that you have seen leadership from someone and you think that you want them to represent the project, then please nominate them. If you would like to help manage the libgit2 project, please nominate yourself.