The Developer Relations Foundation (DRF) is an open community of practitioners working to elevate the professional practice of developer relations. DRF is hosted by the Linux Foundation as a community project
This repository is the public home for DRF governance, community processes, meeting notes, proposals, and historical records
Important
DRF is currently moving into its next phase through an open governance transition. The former Steering Committee has completed its service. The immediate priority is to rebuild regular community participation, identify useful priorities and programs, and create clear paths for contributors to take ownership. Establishing the next Steering Committee will be part of that community-led process
Read the full governance transition announcement
The best way to help shape DRF's next phase is to participate in the community process:
- Join a bi-weekly DRF Community Touchpoint. These are open calls where practitioners can reconnect, raise current challenges, propose useful outputs, and help organize the work. See the Community Touchpoint meeting notes and agendas, beginning with the September 2 announcement
- Add a topic to an upcoming meeting-note discussion or start a new discussion
- Share a proposal, use case, framework, or resource in the Ideas forum
- Volunteer to moderate a Touchpoint, document a session, organize a project, or help deliver a community-selected output. Express your interest in the latest meeting-note discussion
- Join the community mailing list and check the community calendar for current dates and times
Touchpoints are initially scheduled at a time intended to provide a reasonable overlap across APAC, EMEA, and AMER. Additional volunteers can help DRF alternate times and improve regional accessibility
The transition process is focused on:
- defining the Foundation's future priorities with the community
- making contribution paths clearer and more accessible
- identifying the resources and programs most valuable to DevRel practitioners
- finding contributors willing to lead, organize, and deliver the work
- establishing a renewed governance and Steering Committee model based on meaningful participation
Linux Foundation staff will help facilitate a stable and transparent transition by restoring regular communication, community touchpoints, and clear participation paths. Progress depends on community members stepping forward to shape priorities and carry the work forward
DRF contributors have established the initial foundation and produced reusable resources for the profession. Work completed to date includes:
- establishing the Technical Charter, initial governance model, Code of Conduct, and community processes
- gathering community input on persistent DevRel challenges, themes, priorities, and opportunities
- designing and running a phased, community-led approach to turn community input into working projects
- launching working groups across metrics and reporting, innovation and emerging trends, career support, structure and organization, resource aggregation, and community engagement support
- maintaining a curated DevRel resource collection
- developing a DevRel Maturity Model for understanding the organization and structure of DevRel tactics
- developing a Metrics Index covering metrics, key performance indicators, and measures of DevRel impact
- creating a structured Developer Relations Persona Library
- creating a DevRel Tools Catalog mapped to jobs to be done within DevRel programs
- creating community engagement resources for practitioners
- maintaining an open DevRel events directory
- publishing reusable DRF brand assets
Some original working groups are no longer active. Their repositories and outputs remain available as an open record of the work. During the transition, new or continued projects should grow from current community priorities and contributors willing to lead them.
For transparency, DRF uses LFX Insights to make project activity and participation visible. The DRF contributors dashboard provides a configurable leaderboard and community-health views based on activity available to LFX Insights, including commits, pull requests, issues, and collaborations across the repositories included in the project.
The dashboard can be filtered by time period, repository, activity type, and whether collaborations are included. Its figures update as the underlying project data changes, so the dashboard—not a copied total or screenshot—is the source of record.
Leaderboard counts are one transparency signal, not a complete measure of a person's value or impact. They do not by themselves confer governance authority, and they should not be used to compare the quality of different kinds of contribution. A contributor may also appear under more than one identity until their aliases are consolidated in LFX. DRF should consider documented leadership, facilitation, review, research, design, community support, and other meaningful work alongside quantitative activity when recognizing contributors.
Bi-weekly Community Touchpoints are DRF's primary open forum during this phase. They provide a neutral space to:
- discuss challenges affecting the DevRel profession, including changes related to AI
- share experiences, use cases, and emerging practices
- identify resources or programs the community would find valuable
- turn useful ideas into concrete, contributor-led work
- make the governance transition visible and participatory
Each Touchpoint should have a moderator and a note-taker. Anyone may volunteer for these roles. Agendas and summaries should be published in GitHub Discussions so people can participate asynchronously
All participants must follow the DRF Code of Conduct and Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy
Use GitHub Discussions to introduce a topic or proposal:
- Meeting Notes for Touchpoint agendas, suggested topics, and session summaries
- Ideas for new projects, resources, practices, or programs
- New discussion when another available category is more appropriate
Discussion should be open and documented. When a proposal requires a formal governance decision, DRF uses GitVote on the relevant GitHub issue or pull request. The organization-wide defaults are maintained in the DRF GitVote configuration. Voting eligibility and thresholds must follow the current approved governance model; the configuration will need to evolve with the governance transition.
Contributions representing DRF should follow the Foundation's shared identity and publishing guidance:
- DRF Brand Identity is the source for official logos, visual assets, typography, and website styles
- The website's Voice and Tone guide defines writing style, naming conventions, inclusive global language, and content structure
- The Website Contribution Guide covers blog submissions, site-wide content standards, accessibility, review, attribution, and development contributions
- The published Brand page
Repository-specific contribution guides may add technical or editorial requirements. When guidance differs, use the most specific current guidance and raise any material conflict in GitHub Discussions.
| Document | Purpose | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Technical Charter | Formal project scope and governance provisions | Governing document; expected to evolve through the transition process |
| Code of Conduct | Standards for participation in DRF spaces | Active |
| Governance transition announcement | Current context, transition goals, and leadership status | Current transition notice |
| GitVote configuration | Organization-wide configuration for formal votes on GitHub | Active mechanism; eligibility must be aligned with the renewed governance model |
| Glossary | DRF terminology and communication references | Reference; links may be updated during transition |
| Phased plan | Original method for gathering challenges and forming working groups | Historical operating plan |
| Working group onboarding | Original process for launching working groups | Historical reference during transition |
| Steering Committee guidelines | Nomination and chairperson processes under the former model | Historical reference pending renewed governance |
| Emeritus members | Recognition of former Steering Committee service | Public record |
Historical documents remain available for transparency. Where they conflict with the current transition notice, the August 2026 announcement describes the present operating context until the community adopts updated governance.
- Public forum: GitHub Discussions
- Calendar: DRF community calendar
- Website: dev-rel.org
- LFX support requests: LFX Project Control Center
Governance improvements are welcome. For substantial changes, start with a GitHub Discussion so the community can review the proposal. For corrections, clearer wording, and link maintenance, open a pull request directly.
By participating, you agree to follow the Code of Conduct and applicable Linux Foundation policies.
Unless otherwise noted, documentation in this repository is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.