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Organization and Roles

How the Lingua Franca community and its open-source ecosystem (OSE) are organized and how work gets done.

Project Structure​

The LF OSE has two core teams that collaborate closely with project leads:

Infrastructure & Platform Team

Technical foundation, security, and platform expansion

Outreach and Onboarding Team

Ecosystem growth, documentation, and community support

Infrastructure & Platform Team​

What This Team Does

This team maintains the technical foundation of Lingua Franca:

  • CI/CD systems
  • Compilation and testing infrastructure
  • Repository security
  • Code quality standards
  • Platform support and expansion
  • Virtual and simulated hardware environments

In short, this team keeps LF stable, secure, and evolving responsibly.

Code Review Philosophy

We value thoughtful and careful reviews. Reviews should:

  • Check for correctness
  • Identify potential security issues
  • Ensure architectural consistency
  • Protect long-term maintainability
  • Confirm documentation and testing
Reviews should be thorough enough that merging a pull request does not make anyone nervous.

Trusted members have merge access and exercise careful technical judgment.

Platforms and Hardware

The team supports and expands LF across heterogeneous platforms:

  • Automotive · Robotics · IoT
  • Industrial CPS · Power and energy · Social infrastructure

We balance expansion with maintainability. Virtual hardware environments support reproducible testing, education, and research.

Outreach and Onboarding Team​

What This Team Does

This team helps grow and support the LF ecosystem:

  • Onboarding new contributors
  • Maintaining documentation
  • Developing tutorials
  • Supporting educators
  • Engaging with industry and research users

They work closely with the Infrastructure & Platform Team to keep docs and tutorials aligned with the project.

Community Support

  • Organizes tutorials and Q&A sessions
  • Supports students and first-time contributors
  • Engages stakeholders across academia, industry, and public sectors
  • Helps organize bootcamps and educational activities

Working Together​

  • Technical decisions are discussed openly.
  • Significant changes are reviewed carefully.
  • Teams coordinate when changes affect both infrastructure and users.
  • Project leads help resolve disagreements when needed.

We aim for consensus and transparency rather than formal process.

Code of Conduct​

We maintain a respectful and inclusive community.

Guidelines apply to contributors, forums, Zulip, workshops, and events — following best practices from established open-source communities.

Licensing​

BSD-2, BSD-3, MIT, GPL, ISC. Most core components use BSD for broad adoption, including commercial use. Contributions follow each repository's license.

Guiding Principles​

Keep the bar high for technical quality.
Keep the process lightweight.
Favor transparency over formality.
Support research-to-production translation.
Build a sustainable, welcoming ecosystem.

This document will evolve as the project grows.