Eclipse OpenADx Working Group Charter

Eclipse OpenADx Working Group Charter has been archived.

Version v1.2. Revision history is at end of document.

Vision and Scope

Autonomous driving (AD) is an extremely complex challenge with a complex development process, which is slowed at every turn by incompatibility between widely used development tools. The tools we already use in and of themselves are very good, but they do not work seamlessly with one another simply because they were never designed to work with each other.
This is an industry-wide issue. It slows us all down in the race to automated driving. It costs money and precious resources to reduce the problem to a manageable level. And the thing about it is that the tool chain itself is not something we can monetize.

All major stakeholders/users have issues associated with tool incompatibility, data conversion and lost time.

We lessen this problem by creating the leading automated driving ecosystem ➢ OpenADx

We leverage open collaboration and open source to

Accelerate time to market
Increase efficiency
Focus on customers

It is the goal of this working group (WG) to deliver

An industry-wide accepted definition of the AD toolchain
A reference architecture defining the interoperability of interesting in scope technologies
Open Source projects for better interoperability and functionality of the established development tools

The working group will:

Coordinate the development of related Eclipse Foundation projects towards an OpenADx framework.
Define and manage the specifications for interfaces and functions for the framework.
Promote the OpenADx framework and its value.
Provide a vendor neutral marketing and other services to the OpenADx ecosystem.
Define licensing and intellectual property flows that encourage community participation and tool adoption.
Drive the funding model that enables this working group and its community to operate on a sustainable basis.

Technical Scope

The OpenADx working group will coordinate the development of Eclipse Foundation projects on the following topics:

Implementation of interfaces between the development steps
Implementation of common standards from other working groups (e.g. VDA Leitinitiative)
Definition of an initial setup for fast implementation
Ensures interoperability between development stages

Projects hosted by the Eclipse Foundation in the context of the OpenADx working group apply the Eclipse Development Process and best practices of openness, transparency and meritocracy. As such, these projects are open to participation by developers or contributors. They can submit contributions to the project that will be considered for inclusion by the project committers. Committer status is acquired by contributors after election by existing committers as described in the Eclipse Foundation Development Process.

Governance and Precedence

The following governance documents are applicable to this charter, each of which can be found on the Eclipse Foundation Governance Documents page or the Eclipse Foundation Legal Resources page:

Applicable Documents

Eclipse Foundation Bylaws
Eclipse Foundation Working Group Process
Eclipse Foundation Working Group Operations Guide
Eclipse Foundation Membership Agreement
Eclipse Foundation Intellectual Property Policy
Eclipse Foundation Antitrust Policy
Eclipse Foundation Development Process
Eclipse Foundation Trademark Usage Guidelines

All Members of the working group must be parties to the Eclipse Foundation Membership Agreement, including the requirement set forth in Section 2.2 to abide by and adhere to the Bylaws and then-current policies of the Eclipse Foundation, including but not limited to the Intellectual Property and Antitrust Policies.

In the event of any conflict between the terms set forth in this working group's charter and the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws, Membership Agreement, Development Process, Working Group Process, or any policies of the Eclipse Foundation, the terms of the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws, Membership Agreement, process, or policy shall take precedence.

Membership

In order to participate in the OpenADx working group, an entity must be at least a Contributing Member of the Eclipse Foundation, have executed the OpenADx Participation Agreement, and adhere to the requirements set forth in this Charter.

The OpenADx working group is open at any time to all new members who meet these conditions.

Classes of OpenADx Membership

The membership classes of the OpenADx WG are established to reflect the different interest situations of the members. The membership class has to be declared by the potential member in his OpenADx WG participation agreement. The membership class of each OpenADx WG member is checked once a year.

Driver Members

Driver Members are typically organizations that view the OpenADx activities as strategic to their organization and are willing to invest significant resources to sustain and shape the activities of this working group as well as maintain the scope of OpenADx.
Driver Members include industry users and strategic contributors related to the technologies and results provided by the OpenADx working group.
Driver members will lead the operation of the working group, support the OpenADx projects and will act as first contact of the working group.

Development Members

Development Members are organizations that are interested to benefit from the OpenADx community. They will lead or participate in OpenADx projects and investigate the technical questions. They will propose and execute the OpenADx projects according to the processes defined by the OpenADx working group. Development members will invest efforts to the OpenADx projects as defined in the proposal.

User Members

User Members use the technologies and results provided by the OpenADx WG. They want to keep track of the OpenADx development but do not want to influence in an essential way.
User Members are willed and allowed to work on and bring their ideas in this working group, but they have no voice in the decision process. Typical User Members include industry users of the technologies and results provided by the OpenADx working group. Most User Members operate testing processes as part of their core business.

Guests

Guests are organizations who have been invited for one year by the Steering Committee of OpenADx WG to participate in some aspects of the activities of the Working Group. Typical Guests include all stakeholders in automated driving and beyond, such as R&D partners, academic entities, legislators, consumer protection advocates, insurance companies, and potential future full-fledged members who want to have a closer look before deciding on their strategy. When Guests are invited to an OpenADx WG body for meetings, they have no right to vote. Invitations may be renewed by the Steering Committee. Guests are required to sign the participation agreement.

Guests need to be at least Eclipse Associate Members.

OpenADx WG Participation Fees

The Steering Committee will establish annual participation fees, and these fees will be reviewed and ratified by the Steering Committee on an annual basis. All participants in the working group will be informed of any changes in the participation fees, and this charter will be updated to reflect the established participation fees. The OpenADx Participation Agreement will stipulate that all members agree to pay the participation fees.

In addition to annual participation fees, member organizations participating in OpenADx are expected to contribute employee service days to the benefit of the working group. Results for employee service days can be delivered as:

result packages or
service packages.

The corresponding packages or services have to be offered in advance to and accepted by the steering committee.

The Steering Committee shall establish an annual budget, and in conjunction with Eclipse Foundation staff, shall administer that budget on behalf of the working group.

All members are welcome to make voluntary donations of both additional funding and employee service days to the benefit of the working group.

Case of Violation

All members of OpenADx agree to adhere to the Eclipse Bylaws and this charter, including to meet their financial and employee service day commitments. The Steering Committee is responsible for auditing the employee service day contributions of members, and will inform Eclipse Management Organization (EMO) of any member failing to meet its commitments.

Governance

This OpenADx working group is designed as:

a member driven organization,
a means to foster a vibrant and sustainable ecosystem of components and service providers,
a means to organize the community of each project or component so that users and developers define the roadmap collaboratively.

In order to implement these principles, the “Steering Committee” as the sole governance body for the working group during the incubation phase has been defined.

In addition, a general meeting of the working group, open to all members, shall be held at least once annually.

Steering Committee

Powers and Duties

Steering Committee members are required to:

Define and manage the strategy of the working group.
Define and manage specification work packages and other non-implementation related activities within the scope of this working group.
Define and manage which Eclipse Foundation projects are included within the scope of this working group.
Define and manage the roadmap of the working group.
Review and ratify this charter.
Define the annual fees and employee service days for all classes of working group membership.
Approve the annual budget based upon funds received through fees.
Contribute to the acquisition of new working group members by actively engaging in community development and evangelism

Composition

Each Driver Member of the working group has one seat on the Steering Committee.
Two seats are allocated to Development Members. Development Member seats are allocated following the Eclipse "Single Transferable Vote", as defined in the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws. Elected Development Members have the right to participate in every Steering Committee meeting.
One seat is allocated to User Members. User Member seats are allocated following the Eclipse "Single Transferable Vote", as defined in the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws. Elected User Members have the right to participate in every Steering Committee meeting.

The Steering Committee elects among its Driver Members a chair who will serve as their chair for a 12 month period or until their successor is elected or as otherwise provided for in this Charter.

Meeting Management

The Steering Committee meets at least twice a year.

Common Dispositions

The dispositions below apply to all governance bodies for this working group, unless otherwise specified. For all matters related to membership action, including without limitation: meetings, quorum, voting, electronic voting action without meeting, vacancy, resignation or removal, the respective terms set forth in the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws apply.

Voting

For actions (i) approving specifications for adoption; (ii) approving or changing the name of the working group; and (iii) approving changes to annual Member contribution requirements; any such actions must be approved by no less than two-thirds (2/3) of the representatives present at a committee meeting.

Term and Dates of Elections

This section only applies to the Steering Committee. All representatives shall hold office until their respective successors are appointed or elected, as applicable. There shall be no prohibition on re-election or re-designation of any representative following the completion of that representative’s term of office.
Elected representatives shall each serve one-year terms and shall be elected to serve from July 1 to June 30 of each calendar year, or until their respective successors are elected and qualified.

Meetings Management

All meetings may be held at any place that has been designated by resolution of the corresponding body. All meetings may be held remotely using phone calls, video calls or any other means as designated by resolution of the corresponding body.

Infrastructure

The OpenADx Working Group uses the normal infrastructure provided to Eclipse projects, including, among others, mailing lists, forums, bug trackers, source code repositories, continuous integration servers, build servers, and web sites.

Community Building

The Eclipse Foundation will provide access to its network of developers to facilitate the community building and the dissemination of the OpenADx innovations. The Eclipse Foundation will use its communication channels such as its Newsletter, Twitter, or LinkedIn channels to promote key OpenADx events and encourage its members to join and participate in the OpenADx working group.

Membership Fee Structure

The following table lists the OpenADx working group fees payable to the Eclipse Foundation. Fee structure to be in place by January 1, 2021. Note these fees are in addition to the fees for membership in the Eclipse Foundation; these fees are listed in the Eclipse Foundation membership fee table.

Annual Corporate Revenue	WG Fees Driver Member	WG Fees Development Member	WG Fees User Member
> $250 million	TBD	TBD	TBD
> $100 million <= $250 million	TBD	TBD	TBD
> $50 million <= $100 million	TBD	TBD	TBD
> $10 million <= $50 million	TBD	TBD	TBD
< $10 million	TBD	TBD	TBD
< $1 million < 10 employees	TBD	TBD	TBD

Membership Privileges

Privilege	Driver Member	Development Member	User Member	Guests
Steering Committee	Appointed	Elected	Elected	-

Charter Version History

v1.2 Updates in support of the Eclipse Foundation corporate restructuring and to remove references to the incubation period
v1.1 update June 24, 2020 - to reflect post-incubation period changes related to steering committee composition and fee structure
v1.0 update June 25, 2019 - added election of a steering committee chairman
v0.2 update May 17, 2019 - clarified participation fees and incubation period
v0.1.1 update May 16, 2019 - added reference to OpenADx Participation Agreement
v0.1 created April 28, 2019

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