Maintainers

curl has no CODEOWNERS file. Ownership in this codebase is informal — anyone with merge access can merge to any subsystem — but in practice each large subsystem has 2-3 contributors who do most of the work. The table below is derived from git log against origin/master over the last two years, with [bot] accounts filtered out.

For governance see docs/GOVERNANCE.md. For real-time discussion: https://curl.se/mail/list.cgi?list=curl-library and #curl on Libera Chat.

Subsystem	Recent contributors (git log, default branch, last 2 years)	Last activity
lib/ (overall)	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats, Stefan Eissing	days ago
lib/multi.c (transfer engine)	Stefan Eissing, Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats	days ago
lib/url.c (connection setup)	Stefan Eissing, Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats	days ago
lib/conncache.c (connection cache)	Viktor Szakats, Stefan Eissing, Daniel Stenberg	weeks ago
lib/cfilters.c (filter framework)	Stefan Eissing, Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg	days ago
lib/dnscache.c (DNS cache)	Stefan Eissing, Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats	weeks ago
lib/http.c	Daniel Stenberg, Stefan Eissing, Viktor Szakats	days ago
lib/http2.c	Stefan Eissing, Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg	days ago
lib/vquic/ (HTTP/3)	Stefan Eissing, Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg	2 weeks ago
lib/vtls/ (TLS backends)	Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg, Stefan Eissing	5 days ago
lib/vauth/ (auth mechanisms)	Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg, Stefan Eissing	3 days ago
lib/vssh/ (SSH backends)	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats, Stefan Eissing	2 weeks ago
lib/curlx/ (portability)	Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg, Stefan Eissing	~2 months ago
lib/ftp.c	Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg, Stefan Eissing	days ago
lib/cookie.c	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats	days/weeks ago
lib/ws.c (WebSockets)	Viktor Szakats, Stefan Eissing, Daniel Stenberg	days ago
src/ (CLI tool)	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats, Stefan Eissing	days ago
tests/	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats, Dan Fandrich	days ago
docs/	Daniel Stenberg, Viktor Szakats	days ago
.github/workflows/	Viktor Szakats	days ago
Build system (Autotools + CMake)	Viktor Szakats, Daniel Stenberg	days ago

Project-level maintainers

The author and lead maintainer is Daniel Stenberg. He has been the project's maintainer continuously since taking over Rafael Sagula's httpget in December 1996 — that is, longer than many curl contributors have been programming. Since 2019 he has worked on curl full-time, employed by wolfSSL.

The closest approximation to a "core team" is the set of people who appear consistently in the recent committers list:

• Daniel Stenberg (bagder) — author and lead maintainer
• Viktor Szakats (vszakats) — most-prolific contributor by raw commit count over the last two years; build system, CI matrix, MinGW/Windows toolchain, code-style sweeps
• Stefan Eissing (icing) — connection cache, multi state machine, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, cfilter framework
• Jay Satiro (jay) — Windows specifics, Schannel
• Dan Fandrich (dfandrich) — tests and the autobuild farm

The full attribution roster is in docs/THANKS (54 KB, ~3,500 names).

How decisions get made

Most patches go through the standard PR-review workflow described in Development workflow. Larger choices are discussed on the curl-library mailing list. The maintainer reserves the right to push back on changes that affect ABI, security, or the project's portability story; the "needs-votes" label is the soft mechanism for gauging community interest before an irreversible change.

docs/GOVERNANCE.md describes the formal structure: a security team for embargoed disclosures, a CNA scope, the bug bounty (administered through HackerOne), and the rules for merging. There is no foundation, no board, and no commercial owner — curl is an MIT-licensed open-source project that happens to underpin a substantial fraction of Internet traffic.