Members vs Public

Terminology

Let's get some vocabulary out of the way.

Member Organizations - The organizations who have signed and agreed to abide by the Foundation’s bylaws.

Members - Employees of a member organization.

Associate - A member of the public, not affiliated with one of our member organizations.

Unfortunately, this means that when we use the word “member”, it can mean either Member Organization or Member.

Rights

You do not need to be a Member to contribute to any of our open source projects, or use any of our outputs. With rare exceptions, everything we do is open source or released under creative commons.

* Need approval from the Chair or Project Lead.

Everyone, Associates and Members, have access to our public communication channels and can contribute to our open-source projects. In addition, we have many places where Associates can engage with the work of the Foundation, and we provide support for Associates to self-organize via projects like our meetup program.

Members have additional rights, including the right to partake in our consensus model, propose projects, and hold governance positions such as project leads, working group, and sig chair roles. Most communication happens in public, but members also have access to private email lists and can join meetings.

Members need to be approved by the representatives of their Member Organizations. However, they can still engage as Contributors if they are not approved to represent their Member Organization in Foundation activities.

Associate Getting Started Guide

1. Make sure to join our newsletter if you need more time to figure out if/how/where you want to get involved, our newsletter highlights important announcements, news, calls to action, and hot discussion topics every week. So subscribe, lurk and when you are ready, engage. You can read the previous issues here.

2. Complete our Green Software Training Course. Green software means different things to different people. So let's get clear on what it is we do. Most of what we do will make sense if you have a basic understanding of green software. It takes 2-3 hours, and if you pass the exam, you get a certificate of completion from the Linux Foundation.

3. Read our Theory of Change. This describes our goal and how we believe we’ll get there.

4. Read up on How we work. We have a unique working model; it can be scary and confusing if you don't know the rules but comforting and welcoming if you do.

5. Visit our discussions board, and feel free to say Hi in the introductions category.

6. Most projects have issues/discussions on GitHub; feel free to browse when you are ready to add your thoughts to any topics.

Member Getting Started Guide

For employees of Member organizations there are a few more steps we recommend you take. You must do this if you are representing your Member organization in any communications or engaging with the Foundation as part of your role.

1. Follow the same instructions as the Associate Getting Started Guide above.

2. Fill out this form using your work email to be added to our list. Note, again this list is only for employees of member organizations.

3. Once your application is approved, we will add you to several internal email lists, gsf-all@greensoftware.foundation, gsf-newsletter@greensoftware.foundation, and gsf-announcements@greensoftware.foundation. Please ensure these are added as contacts in your email platform to make sure our messages don't go to spam. Our newsletter is monthly, and the announcements email is just a few times a year.

If you do nothing more at this stage, that's fine; you will receive a monthly summary email of all the critical activities in the Foundation. If something requires a vote or consensus, it is sent via email. Review that email to see areas you want to get more involved with.

1. If there is a Working Group, or Project that interests you, request to join its email list, they will send out regular emails to again keep you informed.

2. Once you join an email list for a Group or Project, you will be automatically added to any regularly scheduled meetings for that group/project. So feel free to join and listen in, there isn't any need to engage until you are ready.

3. The best way to start engaging with almost every group is to engage in a discussion. That discussion could be over email or via GitHub discussions/issues.

Sometimes our content gets old, and only some projects have up-to-date information, feel free to contact us at help@greensoftware.foundation, and we will guide you.