Ben Olson
Senior Data Science Analyst, Adobe
The FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS™) is an open specification initiative of the Linux Foundation supported by the FinOps Foundation, the Tokenomics Foundation, and the ITAM Forum (which are themselves Projects 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 FOCUS’s operational needs.
FOCUS was set up as a Joint Development Foundation (JDF) Specification Project with open and clear governance to keep it fully neutral, standalone, and set it up to head toward being an international standard in the future.
The FOCUS Project manages the intellectual property and licensing rights associated with contributions to and use of the FOCUS Specification. 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.
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 and maintenance of the FOCUS Specification is managed in an open GitHub repository.
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.
The FinOps Foundation staff (working for the Linux Foundation) provides day-to-day operational support for FOCUS, helping coordinate contributor workflows, facilitate working group activities, and manage communications and publishing efforts. Staff members ensure the consistency, accessibility, and strategic alignment of FOCUS with the broader FinOps Foundation programs, align between the various voting bodies (Steering Committee, Technical Advisory Council, Governing Board, etc) and the mission of the Foundation. While they don’t determine the direction of the standard, they play a critical role in keeping the initiative running smoothly and supporting the efforts of its contributors.
