This project is led and managed by a benevolent dictator (BD), who is responsible for the general strategic direction in addition to the day-to-day maintenance of the project. In turn, it is the community's job to guide the decisions of the benevolent dictator through active engagement and contribution.
In the NUnit Legacy project the role of Benevolent Dictator is filled by Charlie Poole, who serves as the project lead. In spite the title, the BD is fully answerable to the community. That's because the community always has the ability to fork the project or any of its sub-projects. The BD must therefore understand the community as a whole and strive to satisfy as many conflicting needs as possible, while ensuring that the project survives.
In the case of this project, whose vision includes a limited life span, the BD carries the added responsibility of deciding when the project has fulfilled its mission and may reasonably be terminated.
Committers are contributors who have made sustained valuable contributions to the project and are now relied upon to write code directly to the repository. In many cases they are programmers but it is also possible that they contribute in a different role. Typically, a committer will focus on a specific aspect of the project, and will bring a level of expertise and understanding that earns them the respect of the community and the project lead.
Although committers have no authority over the overall direction of the project, they do have the ear of the project lead. It is a committer's job to ensure that the lead is aware of the community's needs and collective objectives, and to help develop or elicit appropriate contributions to the project.
How to become one: Be appointed by the Benevolent Dictator
Contributors are community members who submit pull requests for the project. These pull requests may be a one-time occurrence or occur over time. Expectations are that contributors will submit pull requests that are small at first and will only grow larger once the contributor has built confidence in the quality of their pull requests.
How to become one: Submit a pull request for one of our sub-projects, following an added contribution guidelines specified in that repository. We'll evaluate the request to determine if it aligns with the project's goals, includes tests that run without failure and functions as intended. If all of the requirements are met we'll accept it and merge it into the project.
Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community: without them, the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no specific requirements.
Users are encouraged to participate in the life of the project and the community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user activities include (but are not limited to):
Advocating the use of the project
Informing developers of the project strength and weaknesses from a new user's perspective
Providing moral support (a ‘thank you' goes a long way)
Writing documentation and tutorials
Filing bug reports and feature requests
Participating on the discussion board
Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often find themselves becoming more and more involved. Such users may then go on to become contributors, as described above.
How to become one: Use one of our projects and participate at https://github.com/nunit-legacy.