Issue Lifecycle

To ensure a balance between work carried out by the NGINX engineering team while encouraging community involvement on this project, we use the following issue lifecycle. (Note: The issue creator refers to the community member that created the issue. The issue owner refers to the NGINX team member that is responsible for managing the issue lifecycle.)

New issue created by community member.
Assign issue owner: All new issues are assigned an owner on the NGINX engineering team. This owner shepherds the issue through the subsequent stages in the issue lifecycle.
Determine issue type: This is done with automation where possible, and manually by the owner where necessary. The associated label is applied to the issue.

Possible Issue Types:
- needs more info: The owner should use the issue to request information from the creator. If we don't receive the needed information within 7 days, automation closes the issue.
- bug: The implementation of a feature is not correct.
- proposal: Request for a change. This can be a new feature, tackling technical debt, documentation changes, or improving existing features.
- question: The owner converts the issue to a github discussion and engages the creator.
Determine milestone: The owner, in collaboration with the wider team (PM & engineering), determines what milestone to attach to an issue. Generally, milestones correspond to product releases - however there are two 'magic' milestones with special meanings (not tied to a specific release):
- Issues assigned to backlog: Our team is in favour of implementing the feature request/fixing the issue, however the implementation is not yet assigned to a concrete release. If and when a backlog issue aligns well with our roadmap, it will be scheduled for a concrete iteration. We review and update our roadmap at least once every quarter. The backlog list helps us shape our roadmap, but it is not the only source of input. Therefore, some backlog items may eventually be closed as out of scope, or relabelled as backlog candidate once it becomes clear that they do not align with our evolving roadmap.
- Issues assigned to backlog candidate: Our team does not intend to implement the feature/fix request described in the issue and wants the community to weigh in before we make our final decision.
backlog issues can be labeled by the owner as help wanted and/or good first issue as appropriate.
Promotion of backlog candidate issue to backlog issue: If an issue labelled backlog candidate receives more than 30 upvotes within 60 days, we promote the issue by applying the backlog label. While issues promoted in this manner have not been committed to a particular release, we welcome PRs from the community on them.

If an issue does not make our roadmap and has not been moved to a discussion, it is closed with the label out of scope. The goal is to get every issue in the issues list to one of the following end states:
- An assigned release.
- The backlog label.
- Closed as out of scope.

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