Distillation

Date: Sep 8, 2026

• 🔴 (21:42) User stated a source-attribution preference: “always make it explicit where you copied from.”
• 🔴 (21:42) User stated that adding a new feature is “always a careful balancing act.”
• 🔴 (21:42) User directed: “Make sure to keep this in sync with the PR template.”
• 🔴 (21:42) User directed: “switch to your target version branch.”
• 🔴 (21:42) User directed: “Replace the GOOS and GOARCH values with your target platform if you wish to cross-compile.”
• 🟡 (21:42) The CHARTER.md patch in opentofu-github-pr-2830 empowers the TSC to approve Contributors as Committers, remove Committers by majority approval, establish submission/approval/closure workflows, set promotion requirements, modify or eliminate roles, create new roles, and elect a TSC Chair.
• 🟡 (21:42) The charter enumerates 10 possible TSC oversight responsibilities, in order: 1. coordinate technical direction, 2. interpret the Charter, 3. address legal matters with the Series Manager, 4. approve sub-project/system proposals including incubation, deprecation, and scope changes, 5. organize or remove sub-projects, 6. create subcommittees or working groups, 7. appoint external representatives, 8. establish community norms and rules for contributions, workflows, release candidates, and security reporting, 9. enable discussion and vote on cross-project technical matters, 10. coordinate marketing, events, or communications.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter voting rules: decisions primarily use consensus; otherwise each TSC member gets one vote, subject to an employer-affiliation cap. With at least 5 TSC members, employees of one company or related-company group have a combined cap of 2 votes; with 4 or fewer TSC members, the cap is 1 vote.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter meeting-vote rules require at least 50% of voting TSC members present; ordinary motions pass by a majority of votes cast. Asynchronous ordinary motions require affirmative votes from at least 50% of all voting members.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter supermajority rules require participation by all voting TSC members in a meeting or asynchronously, adequate notice, and a two-thirds majority of all voting members; members may request a 14-calendar-day postponement.
• 🟡 (21:42) The charter requires supermajority votes for amendments, legal matters, and alternative-license exceptions. Any unresolved vote may be referred by a voting member to the Series Manager.
• 🟡 (21:42) The charter permits asynchronous voting on a suitable medium with at least 14 calendar days of verifiable notice and requires public documentation of TSC decisions within 14 days after the vote, including detailed discussion notes when the matter is not confidential.
• 🟡 (21:42) Governance timing in GOVERNANCE.md is stricter than the charter baseline: the TSC meets every 2 weeks, proposed agendas should be published at least 3 days in advance, meetings are public, and decisions must be documented in a public TSC folder within 3 days after a vote.
• 🟡 (21:42) OpenTofu project-delegation rules in GOVERNANCE.md: the TSC has ultimate authority over all projects in the OpenTofu GitHub organization; it may delegate decisions to project maintainers only through an explicit documented vote; delegated projects must maintain MAINTAINERS.md; and the TSC retains override power but should exercise restraint.
• 🟡 (21:42) GOVERNANCE.md distinguishes formal external-project relationships—created by TSC vote and potentially involving technical collaboration, shared governance, or co-maintained specifications—from informal community-driven integrations and extensions that need no formal governance oversight.
• 🟡 (21:42) Contributions to related projects must follow, in order: 1. that project’s governance model, 2. the OpenTofu code of conduct, 3. additional TSC cross-project collaboration guidelines.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter compliance rules require open participation on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms and transparent, open, collaborative, and ethical operation; project discussions, proposals, timelines, decisions, and status should be openly visible, with potential transparency violations reported immediately to the Series Manager.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter community-asset rules assign LF Projects title to OpenTofu trade and service marks, require transfer of project trademarks to LF Projects to hold for the project, and state that the project develops and owns its GitHub accounts, social-media accounts, and domain registrations subject to the applicable LF license.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter intellectual-property rules: contributors retain copyright; inbound and outbound code normally use Mozilla Public License Version 2.0; inbound code requires a Developer Certificate of Origin sign-off through a TSC-approved process; documentation uses Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; upstream contributions must follow the upstream project’s contribution and licensing terms.
• 🟡 (21:42) Alternative inbound or outbound licenses may be approved only as exceptions after describing the contribution, alternative open-source license, and justification; approval requires a two-thirds vote of the entire TSC. Contributed files should identify applicable licenses with information such as SPDX short-form identifiers.
• 🟡 (21:42) Charter amendments require a two-thirds vote of the entire TSC plus approval by LF Projects.
• 🟡 (21:42) The revised CONTRIBUTING.md lists 6 current TSC members with affiliations: 1. Arel Rabinowitz (@RLRabinowitz) — env0, 2. Christian Mesh (@cam72cam) — Spacelift, 3. Igor Savchenko (@DiscyDel, linked URL spells DicsyDel) — Scalr Inc., 4. James Humphries (@Yantrio) — Spacelift, 5. Roger Simms (@allofthesepeople) — Harness Inc., 6. Zach Goldberg (@ZachGoldberg) — Gruntwork, Inc.
• 🟡 (21:42) The revised CONTRIBUTING.md defines Contributors broadly as anyone advancing OpenTofu through issues, bug investigation, PRs, or other help; defines Maintainers as Charter-defined Committers for one or more repositories; and points to MAINTAINERS.md for current maintainers and responsibilities.
• 🟡 (21:42) The revised contribution guidance points readers to contributing/FAQ.md and contributing/DEVELOPING.md, replaces weekly-update and TSC_SUMMARY.md references with TSC meeting notes, and retains Wednesday community meetings at 14:30 CET / 8:30 AM Eastern / 5:30 AM Western / 19:00 India time.
• 🟡 (21:42) The removed OpenTofu PR checklist required contributors to affirm: contribution guidelines were read; no AI coding assistant created the PR; all code was self-written or marked with its origin; and Terraform source code was not consulted. Its Go checklist required relevant golangci-lint success, existing-test execution, tests for relevant use cases, limited exports, and meaningful comments on exported functions, variables, and structs.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed native build guidance used GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -o tofu -v -buildvcs=false ./cmd/tofu; CGO_ENABLED=0 was used on nearly all platforms except macOS/Darwin because of DNS-resolution issues.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed container build guidance used golang:1.21.3, mounted $PWD at /usr/src/opentofu, set GOOS=linux, GOARCH=amd64, and CGO_ENABLED=0, and ran go build -o tofu -v -buildvcs=false ./cmd/tofu.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed testing guidance specified go test ./... for the full suite, go test ./internal/command/... or go test ./internal/addrs for targeted packages, and TF_ACC=1 go test ./internal/initwd for acceptance tests involving external services.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed integration and generation guidance specified make list-integration-tests, make test-s3, go generate ./... followed by git diff, and make protobuf with a suitable installed protoc.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed dependency-license guidance identified approved licenses in .licensei.toml, used the licensei tool, and instructed running export GITHUB_TOKEN=changeme followed by make license-check after changes to go.mod or go.sum.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed backport workflow: update main and the target version branch, locate the source commit ID, switch to the target version branch, create backports/ISSUE_NUMBER with git checkout -b backports/ISSUE_NUMBER, cherry-pick using git cherry-pick -s COMMIT_ID_HERE, then add a changelog commit and open a PR.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed copyright guidance required permission and a Co-authored-by sign-off for code written by others; warned that LLM assistants such as ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot may reproduce BSL-licensed Terraform code; prohibited copying Terraform repository code or third-party Terraform PRs, except that an author may submit their own PR to both Terraform and OpenTofu.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed copyright enforcement language said violations immediately disqualify the PR from merging and the contributor from working on that code area, while repeat violations may result in a project-wide contribution ban.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed feature-evaluation criteria, in exact order: 1. technical feasibility, 2. whether it creates technical debt or masks a deeper issue, 3. whether someone can perform the work, 4. core-team capacity to support a community contributor, 5. whether it enables a genuinely new capability and has sufficient community need rather than merely integrating a fashionable technology.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed feature-request outcomes, in exact order: 1. accepted for core-team development, 2. accepted for community contribution with help wanted, 3. more information or an RFC needed, 4. more community input needed with needs community input, 5. rejected with an explanation, 6. referred to the TSC for substantial developer-time commitments, legal implications, or other leadership concerns.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed issue-assignment checklist asked contributors, in order: 1. whether the expected result is clear, 2. their implementation timeline, 3. whether they need codebase help via #dev-general rather than DMs, 4. whether they have experience writing tests because code PRs need adequate tests, 5. whether they have read the contribution document, especially copyright and sign-off sections.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed label definitions covered pending-decision, pending-steering-committee-decision, accepted, help wanted, good first issue, bug, enhancement, documentation, rfc, question, needs-community-input, and needs-rfc, each describing the issue’s decision, contribution, complexity, evidence, or design status.
• 🟡 (21:42) Removed build recipes included go build -ldflags "-w -s -X 'github.com/opentofu/opentofu/version.dev=no'" -o tofu ./cmd/tofu to remove the -dev suffix and go build -ldflags "-w -s -X 'main.experimentsAllowed=yes'" -o tofu ./cmd/tofu to enable experimental features.