At OpenSSL, we’re always learning and taking small steps, informed by both fresh ideas and the feedback we receive. Today, we’d like to share a couple of updates we hope will make things clearer and more collaborative for our community.

These updates are part of our effort to align more closely with, and live by, our Mission and Values.

Our code changes and reviews of code changes are public as github issues and pull requests, but our decision making around what items the projects resources are working on has been mostly opaque to our communities.

We’re introducing a Project Board. This new initiative offers a clearer view of our tasks and priorities. For those who want a deeper dive into how we operate, our Project Board Handbook is available.

We’re also shifting how we release the OpenSSL library. We’ve adopted a time-based release policy, with releases every April and October. After our 3.2 release in October, our 3.3 release in April next year will be our first time-based release, marking our initial venture into this approach.

Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. We’re thankful for the ongoing work of our existing committees, OTC and OMC. In line with our new release policy, we’re introducing the Release Steering Committee, which will guide the release cycle, define release priorities, and authorise release backlog modifications. It will be formed as a group of four members: an engineer and a manager from OpenSSL, along with two invited members from the community. We’re looking forward to the fresh perspectives they’ll bring. We don’t have all the details as to precisely how the Release Steering Committee will operate - we expect that this will evolve as we get feedback and experience over the next few releases.

All these changes are our way of trying to improve, to build stronger ties with our communities, and to keep things transparent and predictable.

Finally, we’d love to hear from you. What do you think? How can we improve further? Your trust and feedback are invaluable to us, and together, we hope to continue growing and evolving. Please route your feedback to feedback@openssl.org.