Cloud Native Buildpacks RFCs is a request-for-comments system for proposing and discussing substantial changes to the Cloud Native Buildpacks project.
The tool addresses the need for structured community input on major project decisions. Proposals are submitted as pull requests containing RFC documents that describe the change, its motivation, and tradeoffs. The process moves through discussion phases where community members and working groups provide feedback, then enters a final comment period where binding votes from core team members determine acceptance. This approach ensures that significant changes receive broad review and documented consensus before implementation.
Teams adopting this RFC process should expect a formal governance structure suitable for projects with multiple stakeholders and a need for transparent decision-making. It works best for projects where changes affect multiple audiences—such as buildpack authors, platform operators, or specification implementers—and where decisions benefit from documented rationale. The process includes labeling mechanisms to route RFCs to relevant audiences and working groups, and it explicitly prevents any single company from dominating voting outcomes.
The project maintains active discussion through weekly working group meetings where RFCs are reviewed and debated. Pull requests serve as the primary discussion venue, with external conversations summarized back into the thread. The team applies structured labels to categorize RFCs by specification area and audience, and moves proposals through clearly defined stages from active development to final comment period. Voting requires a supermajority of core team members to approve, with a seven-day final comment period that can close early only with unanimous agreement.
