FOCUS Spec KB

Governance and Charter

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Governance and Charter

FOCUS is structured as an independent Joint Development Foundation project under the Linux Foundation, with deliberate separation from FinOps Foundation control to ensure vendor neutrality.

Organizational Structure

The governance of FOCUS is intentionally layered to maintain independence while benefiting from the FinOps Foundation’s resources:

Linux Foundation → Parent organization providing the legal and IP framework via the Joint Development Foundation (JDF) model. The JDF structure is specifically designed for open specification projects and provides a clear path toward international standardization.

FinOps Foundation → A project of the Linux Foundation. Its Directed Fund provides financial support, program management, and staff support for FOCUS’s operational needs. Critically, the FinOps Foundation does not own or control FOCUS — this separation is deliberate and essential to the spec’s credibility as a neutral standard.

FOCUS Project → The standalone JDF Specification Project. It has its own charter, its own steering committee, and its own operating procedures. All governance documents live in the foundation repository.

Steering Committee

The FOCUS Steering Committee is the primary decision-making body for the specification. Its responsibilities include:

  • Providing strategic guidance for the project
  • Approving (ratifying) new specification releases
  • Ensuring the spec adheres to its charter and guiding principles

Members are appointed by the FinOps Foundation Governing Board as specified in the FOCUS Project Charter. The Committee meets regularly and its decisions drive the release cadence.

Maintainers

Maintainers are a subset of FOCUS Contributing Members who advance the day-to-day evolution of the specification. Their responsibilities include:

  • Ensuring documents and work products accurately reflect group decisions
  • Verifying that the specification adheres to formatting and content guidelines
  • Reviewing pull requests and managing the working draft branch

Focus Groups

The project organizes work through Focus Groups — specialized working teams that tackle specific areas of the specification. These groups provide a venue for domain experts to contribute their knowledge on topics like SaaS billing, commitment discounts, or cost allocation.

Contribution Governance

FOCUS uses a hybrid contribution model:

  • Changes can be made directly via GitHub (the official record of the specification)
  • Input can also be provided through participation in Focus Groups
  • All Focus Group input is ultimately entered into GitHub

Every contribution requires signing the FOCUS Membership Agreement via EasyCLA (Electronic Contributor License Agreement). This ensures IP clarity and protects both contributors and the project.

Ratification Process

Each release follows a rigorous, transparent process:

  1. Community contribution and discussion on GitHub
  2. Review by maintainers and Focus Groups
  3. Formal approvals within working groups
  4. Ratification by the Steering Committee
  5. IP review to ensure no encumbered contributions
  6. Publication

All of this happens in the open — issues, pull requests, and discussions are publicly visible on GitHub.

Key Points

  • FOCUS is not a FinOps Foundation working group — it’s a standalone specification project with its own governance
  • The JDF structure positions FOCUS to potentially become an international standard (e.g., via ISO/IEC)
  • The foundation repository contains the charter, operating procedures, scope document, Focus Group definitions, and guiding principles
  • Contact for membership questions: focus@finops.org

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