Organization security policy

This page documents the security practices for the napari GitHub organization, including who has Owner permissions on the organization, how those permissions are granted and reviewed, and the process for requesting temporary elevated access.

GitHub organization owners

GitHub organization owners have elevated permissions over the entire napari GitHub organization, including the ability to manage repositories, teams, and settings across all projects in the organization. Because these permissions carry security risk, ownership is limited to a small number of trusted individuals rather than granted broadly.

Criteria

Owners should meet the following criteria:

• Regularly work with infrastructure and/or repositories across the napari organization.

• Have enough availability on the project to be generally responsive to security and administrative requests.

• Be geographically distributed to provide timezone coverage.

• Be willing to take on the responsibilities of the owner role, including responding promptly to urgent security issues.

Authentication and review

Request to become an owner are made via the private #auth-security Zulip channel and are reviewed by the current owners and the Steering Council.

Ownership designations are reviewed annually, typically at the same time as the core team reaffirmation process (reviewed every January). The Steering Council and Core Team reviews the current list of owners and confirms or adjusts it based on current needs and the criteria above. If an owner is no longer regularly active in the organization, or no longer meets the criteria, they may be removed from the owner role.

Requesting temporary owner access

Sometimes a task requires temporary owner-level permissions — for example, to manage a critical repository migration, handle a security incident, or perform bulk administrative actions. A process exists for requesting and granting temporary owner access.

How to request

Requests for temporary owner access or other elevated permissions should be made in the private #auth-security channel on the napari Zulip. Requests should include:

• Who is requesting the access.

• Why the access is needed (what task requires elevated permissions).

• Duration — how long the access is needed (e.g., “for the next 48 hours”, “until the repository migration is complete”).

• Scope — what specific actions the access will be used for.

Approval

Requests are reviewed by the designated owners and/or the Steering Council. Temporary owner access is granted by any of the current owners. The request and its resolution should be recorded in the Zulip thread for accountability and future reference.

Revocation

Temporary owner permissions are revoked once the stated duration has elapsed or the task is complete, whichever comes first. It is the responsibility of the individual who requested the access to notify the owners when the task is complete so that permissions can be removed promptly. The designated owners may also revoke temporary access at any time if they deem it no longer necessary.

Roles and permissions overview

Role	GitHub permissions	Default holders
Organization owner	Full administrative access to the organization and all its repositories	Four designated owners
Admin	Repository-level admin, team management	Core team members on repositories they maintain
Write	Push access, PR management	Core team members
Read	Read-only access	All organization members

For questions about organization security, contact the Steering Council at napari-steering-council@googlegroups.com.