[Incubation] externa-secrets-operator Incubation Application

[Skarlso]

external-secrets-operator Incubation Application

Project Repo(s): https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets
Project Site: https://external-secrets.io/latest
Sub-Projects: https://github.com/external-secrets/bitwarden-sdk-server
Communication: https://kubernetes.slack.com/messages/external-secrets

Project points of contacts: Moritz Johner( @moolen ), Lucas Severo Alves ( @knelasevero ), Gustavo Fernandes de Carvalho ( @gusfcarvalho ) ,Gergely Brautigam ( @Skarlso )

• (Post Incubation only) Book a meeting with CNCF staff to understand project benefits and event resources.

Incubation Criteria Summary for external-secrets-operator

Application Level Assertion

• This project is currently Sandbox, accepted on 26th of July 2022., and applying to Incubation.
• This project is applying to join the CNCF at the Incubation level.

Adoption Assertion

The project has been adopted by the following organizations in a testing and integration or production capacity:

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/ADOPTERS.md

Application Process Principles

Suggested

N/A

Required

• Engage with the domain specific TAG(s) to increase awareness through a presentation or completing a General Technical Review.
  • This was completed and occurred on 15-01-2025, and can be discovered at [Presentation] Presenting external-secrets-operator project tag-security#1428.

• TAG provides insight/recommendation of the project in the context of the landscape

• All project metadata and resources are vendor-neutral.

• Review and acknowledgement of expectations for Sandbox projects and requirements for moving forward through the CNCF Maturity levels.
• Met during Project's application on 26th of July 2022.

• Due Diligence Review.

Completion of this due diligence document, resolution of concerns raised, and presented for public comment satisfies the Due Diligence Review criteria.

• Additional documentation as appropriate for project type, e.g.: installation documentation, end user documentation, reference implementation and/or code samples.

Governance and Maintainers

Note: this section may be augmented by the completion of a Governance Review from TAG Contributor Strategy.

Suggested

• Clear and discoverable project governance documentation.

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md

• Governance has continuously been iterated upon by the project as a result of their experience applying it, with the governance history demonstrating evolution of maturity alongside the project's maturity evolution.

• Governance is up to date with actual project activities, including any meetings, elections, leadership, or approval processes.

• Governance clearly documents vendor-neutrality of project direction.

• Document how the project makes decisions on leadership, contribution acceptance, requests to the CNCF, and changes to governance or project goals.

• Document how role, function-based members, or sub-teams are assigned, onboarded, and removed for specific teams (example: Security Response Committee).

TODO:

• Document a complete maintainer lifecycle process (including roles, onboarding, offboarding, and emeritus status).

• Demonstrate usage of the maintainer lifecycle with outcomes, either through the addition or replacement of maintainers as project events have required.

• If the project has subprojects: subproject leadership, contribution, maturity status documented, including add/remove process.

Required

• Document complete list of current maintainers, including names, contact information, domain of responsibility, and affiliation.

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/MAINTAINERS.md

• A number of active maintainers which is appropriate to the size and scope of the project.

• Code and Doc ownership in Github and elsewhere matches documented governance roles.

• Document agreement that project will adopt CNCF Code of Conduct.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/coc/

TODO:

• CNCF Code of Conduct is cross-linked from other governance documents.
  doc: link to the CNCF code of conduct external-secrets/external-secrets#4364

• All subprojects, if any, are listed.

Contributors and Community

Note: this section may be augmented by the completion of a Governance Review from TAG Contributor Strategy.

Suggested

• Contributor ladder with multiple roles for contributors.

Question: Is this sufficient?

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/docs/contributing/process.md

Required

• Clearly defined and discoverable process to submit issues or changes.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/process/

• Project must have, and document, at least one public communications channel for users and/or contributors.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/process/

• List and document all project communication channels, including subprojects (mail list/slack/etc.). List any non-public communications channels and what their special purpose is.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/process/ Support and Questions section.

• Up-to-date public meeting schedulers and/or integration with CNCF calendar.

We have weekly external secrets calls and a youtube channel -> https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets?tab=readme-ov-file#bi-weekly-development-meeting

TODO:

• Documentation of how to contribute, with increasing detail as the project matures.

• Demonstrate contributor activity and recruitment.

https://externalsecretsoperator.devstats.cncf.io/d/8/dashboards?orgId=1

• Number of contributors: 100+
• Github stars: 4500+
• Github forks: 844+

Engineering Principles

Suggested

• Roadmap change process is documented.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/roadmap/

• History of regular, quality releases.

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/releases

Required

• Document project goals and objectives that illustrate the project’s differentiation in the Cloud Native landscape as well as outlines how this project fulfills an outstanding need and/or solves a problem differently. This can also be satisfied by completing a General Technical Review.

• Document what the project does, and why it does it - including viable cloud native use cases. This can also be satisfied by completing a General Technical Review.

• Document and maintain a public roadmap or other forward looking planning document or tracking mechanism.

https://github.com/orgs/external-secrets/projects/2/views/1

• Document overview of project architecture and software design that demonstrates viable cloud native use cases, as part of the project's documentation. This can also be satisfied by completing a General Technical Review and capturing the output in the project's documentation.

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/docs/introduction/overview.md

There are a lot of documentations on the website as well about architecture usage and further information.

https://external-secrets.io/latest/introduction/overview/
https://external-secrets.io/latest/api/components/
https://external-secrets.io/latest/provider/aws-secrets-manager/
https://external-secrets.io/latest/examples/gitops-using-fluxcd/

• Document the project's release process.

https://external-secrets.io/main/contributing/release/

Security

Note: this section may be augmented by a joint-assessment performed by TAG Security.

Suggested

N/A

Required

• Clearly defined and discoverable process to report security issues.

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/SECURITY.md

• Enforcing Access Control Rules to secure the code base against attacks (Example: two factor authentication enforcement, and/or use of ACL tools.)

7.9 app openSSF score -> https://securityscorecards.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets

• Document assignment of security response roles and how reports are handled.
  https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets?tab=readme-ov-file#security
  All maintainers have security in focus and monitor these channels constantly.

TODO:

• Document Security Self-Assessment.

• Achieve the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Best Practices passing badge.

https://app.fossa.com/projects/git%2Bgithub.com%2Fexternal-secrets%2Fexternal-secrets/refs/branch/main/210b39715ee37ab56e1575cf5a95303c9037f696/preview

Ecosystem

Suggested

N/A

Required

• Publicly documented list of adopters, which may indicate their adoption level (dev/trialing, prod, etc.)

https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/ADOPTERS.md

• Used in appropriate capacity by at least 3 independent + indirect/direct adopters, (these are not required to be in the publicly documented list of adopters)

The project provided the TOC with a list of adopters for verification of use of the project at the level expected, i.e. production use for graduation, dev/test for incubation.

• TOC verification of adopters.

Refer to the Adoption portion of this document.

• Clearly documented integrations and/or compatibility with other CNCF projects as well as non-CNCF projects.

External secrets has a long history of being used together with Flux, Argo, Helm and other CNCF projects.

Additional Information

External Secrets was present on KubeCon NA and has a rapidly growing community. Greater companies are using it internally for which verification is hard to come by but we know about them. I'm in the process to get some kind of recognition from those companies.

Something this is difficult, because being a security tool, not many might divulge this information freely.

We believe that the project came a long way and has matured considerably. There might be some missing or outdated information here and there, but we are willing to and able to fix those and keep them updated regularly ( thinking about the adoption process or clearly defined security roles, etc ).

Also, we have to be more diligent in following the project board. Which can be achieved.

[Skarlso]

There is an outdated self-assessment already which I'm in the process of updating. https://tag-security.cncf.io/community/assessments/projects/external-secrets/self-assessment/

[Skarlso]

Also, I'm going to discuss this proposal on 11th of December's tag-security bi-weekly.

[Skarlso]

Updated self-assessment cncf/tag-security#1435

[Skarlso]

Added TAG presentation issue cncf/tag-security#1428.

[angellk]

@angellk to triage

[Skarlso]

Hello 👋

All todos have been completed except for these two:

• Document a complete maintainer lifecycle process (including roles, onboarding, offboarding, and emeritus status).

• Demonstrate usage of the maintainer lifecycle with outcomes, either through the addition or replacement of maintainers as project events have required.

I'm unsure how to do this. :D Can I have some example somewhere please so I can write up a nice document for these tasks? :) Thanks!