About the FOCUS Project

The FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS™) is an open standard Project supported by the FinOps Foundation (which is itself a Project of the Linux Foundation). The FinOps Foundation’s Directed Fund as voted on by the Governing Board provides financial support, program management, and staff support for the Project’s operational needs.

FOCUS is a Joint Development Foundation (JDF) Project. JDF is part of the Linux Foundation network and handles the formation and governance of open Projects. Using JDF allows open Projects with multiple types of technical deliverables (source code, technical reports, specifications, and data) like FOCUS™ to form quickly and collaborate under a standard set of guidelines and legal frameworks.

The FOCUS Project manages the intellectual property and licensing rights associated with contributions to and use of the FOCUS Specification.

Governance

The Project Charter establishes the terms upon which this project operates. These Operational Procedures outline how the members of the project adhere to the terms in the project charter.

The Specification is driven by open governance to ensure not only neutrality, but also to protect it from IP infringement claims and make it safe for broad adoption. Each release must pass through a rigorous process of community contribution, review, approvals, ratification, and IP review. This is all done in the open via Github.

Steering Committee

FOCUS is led by its own Steering Committee. Steering Committee members are appointed by the FinOps Foundation Governing Board as specified in the FOCUS Project Charter. The Steering Committee is responsible for providing strategic guidance and the approval of the Specifications.

Development

Development and maintenance of the FOCUS Specification is managed in an open GitHub repository.

Maintainers

Maintainers are a subset of FOCUS Contributing Members who advance the day-to-day evolution of the Specification and related work products. Maintainers are responsible for ensuring that documents and work products accurately reflect the decisions that have been made by the group, and that the Specification adheres to formatting and content guidelines. Maintainers have been given write access to one or more FOCUS Working Group repositories within the FOCUS Project’s Github organization.

Contributing Members

In collaboration with Maintainers, Contributing Members help drive the evolution of project standards and participate in decision-making processes. Their responsibilities encompass actively participating in meetings, as well as engaging on GitHub.

Contributors are crucial in labeling issues and pull requests, ensuring that these accurately reflect the content’s nature and urgency. They are also involved in reviewing and providing constructive feedback on pull requests and issues, thus directly contributing to the refinement of project specifications and adherence to editorial guidelines. Additionally, Contributing Members provide essential input on project documentation, advocating for clarity, accuracy, and accessibility to ensure the documentation serves as a reliable resource.

How to Get Involved

Formal Participation

To contribute to the development and maintenance of the FOCUS Specification, your organization must review the Member Agreement and sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA).

Organizations that sign the CLA can designate Contributors to the FOCUS Project who may then contribute issues, content, or pull requests to the Project work products.

You do not need to be a Member of the FinOps Foundation to become a FOCUS Contributing Member, and there is no cost to contribute to FOCUS.

Informal Participation

If you are unable to or uninterested in becoming a formal Contributing Member, but still wish to share needs and use cases, please join the FOCUS User Group. These practitioner-led, vendor-neutral, interactive, one-hour virtual discussions are for you to get into deep conversations about the Project, the Specification, FOCUS datasets, and implementing FinOps using FOCUS. (Calls happen at times that are friendly for both Americas/EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Please apply to join calls in one region only.)

Additionally, anyone with a Github account is welcome to create and/or comment on an issue in the FOCUS GitHub repository.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at focus@finops.org.