Project Organization

In this article, we give you insight into the projects organizational structure and explain why we have have chosen this structure.

Good Dictator

The group around OpenWalnut is organized according to the good dictator principle. To summarize the article of Landon Blake, the good dictator has three important characteristics:

• a long term commitment to the project
• ability to balance interests
• ability to see beyond own immediate needs

This prevents stagnation and dirty code, as the good dictator is targeted towards progress of the project. In the OpenWalnut project, the good dictator relies on the feedback and competence of the developers and contributors. We, therefore, have monthly meetings and communicate current development and planned new features. We discuss current and future architecture and design decisions and regularly meet with OpenWalnut users. Depending on the topic, we have people in the group, which bundle the competence on this topic. The good dictator attaches importance to their opinion but also considers concerns of other group members, developers, and contributors during these meetings. This is very important to balance interests and to avoid contrary interests block the project's progress. This way, we can decide in a democratic way, where every opinion is considered. The good dictator is the final instance which prioritizes decisions and solves conflicts in a way most beneficial to the project itself.

The meeting protocols are distributed using our developer mailing list.

Developer and other Contributors

We, the core team behind OpenWalnut rely on the opinions, ideas and critics of other developer and contributors. The opinion of others is important to OpenWalnut's progress. This is why we want to encourage you to submit bugs, patches, and ideas. There is a multitude of possibilities to get in contact with us and to get involved.

Competences:

This section lists the current good dictator and the members in authority for a certain topic. For further information on each person listed here, have a look at the People page.

Good Dictator:

• Alexander Wiebel (2017 - today)
• Mathias Goldau (2015 - 2017)
• Sebastian Eichelbaum (2011 - 2015)
• Alexander Wiebel (2009 - 2011)

Technical and Organizational Support

• Branding: Alexander Wiebel
• Documentation: Alexander Wiebel
• Infrastructure (Technical): Sebastian Volke
• Release Management: Sebastian Eichelbaum

System Support

• Linux Support: Sebastian Eichelbaum
• MacOSX Support: Mathias Goldau
• Windows Support: Stefan Philips

Development and API

• Data Handler: André Reichenbach
• Graphics Engine: Sebastian Eichelbaum
• GUI: Alexander Wiebel
• Kernel: Sebastian Eichelbaum