Governance

Overview

OpenALBA is maintained by the OpenALBA Working Group under an open governance model. The project is committed to vendor neutrality and community-driven development.

Principles

  1. Openness: All specification work happens in public
  2. Consensus: Major changes require working group agreement
  3. Vendor neutrality: No single vendor controls the specification
  4. Compatibility: Changes maintain backward compatibility where possible

Decision making process

Specification changes (major)

  1. Author submits RFC as GitHub pull request
  2. 14-day community review period
  3. Working group discussion and iteration
  4. Consensus approval required (no sustained objections)
  5. Merge and version bump

Specification changes (minor)

  1. Author submits pull request with rationale
  2. 7-day review period
  3. Two maintainer approvals required
  4. Merge to specification

Security issues

  1. Report via security@openalba.org
  2. Expedited private review (48 hours)
  3. Coordinated disclosure after fix available

Working groups

Working GroupScopeMeeting
Core SpecificationScoring methodology, baseline algorithmsBi-weekly
IntegrationsOpenTelemetry, vendor adaptersMonthly
Detection PatternsNew patterns, MITRE mappingsMonthly

Maintainers

NB

Nathaniel Bobrick

Developer Operations

JC

Jonathon Carlyon

Analytics & Methodology

NS

Nate Schmitz

Security

Get involved

OpenALBA is a small, community-driven project. If you're interested in shaping the specification:

  • •Join the discussion on GitHub issues and pull requests
  • •Propose changes via the RFC process
  • •Share implementation feedback from real-world use

Active participants who demonstrate expertise and good judgment may be invited to join as maintainers.

Code of conduct

All participants in the OpenALBA community are expected to follow the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.

Licensing

The OpenALBA specification is released under the Apache License 2.0.

Last updated: 2026-01-31