Octacity is an open-source community organized around eight main teams. It provides a long-term environment where members can build, maintain, and contribute to projects together.
The community focuses on projects that continue beyond short events, temporary groups, or one-time demonstrations. Projects are expected to develop through active contribution, maintenance, documentation, discussion, and shared responsibility.
Organization-wide governance, contribution guidelines, security policies, support information, and community standards can be found in the Octacity community files repository.
Octacity welcomes new members. Information about joining can be found in the membership repository.
Octacity is represented by eight main teams.
Each team must have at least two members, with no fixed upper limit. Teams may grow, reorganize responsibilities, and create subteams for particular projects or areas of work.
Subteams do not replace the main structure. Octacity continues to be represented by its eight main teams regardless of how work is divided internally.
Teams create and maintain repositories under the Octacity organization.
The team responsible for a repository becomes its maintaining team. It guides the project's direction and continued development by:
- Defining its goals and scope
- Planning development
- Reviewing issues and pull requests
- Making technical and organizational decisions
- Maintaining documentation
- Managing releases and ongoing maintenance
The maintaining team is responsible for the repository, but members of other teams are encouraged to contribute wherever their knowledge or interests are useful.
Projects may also be developed collaboratively by multiple teams.
Octacity prioritizes projects that community members can actively contribute to over time.
Projects do not need to begin as large or complex systems. A small project with a clear purpose, active maintainers, and room for continued improvement is often more valuable than an ambitious project that cannot be sustained.
Long-term work may include:
- Adding and improving features
- Fixing bugs
- Refining architecture
- Maintaining dependencies
- Improving documentation
- Testing and reliability work
- Supporting users and contributors
- Researching new approaches
Participation is not limited to programming. Depending on the project, members may contribute through:
- Software development
- User interface and product design
- Testing and quality assurance
- Documentation and technical writing
- Research and experimentation
- Infrastructure and deployment
- Project planning and coordination
- Community support
- Code and design review
- Mentorship
Octacity projects are developed openly whenever practical. Repositories, source code, documentation, issues, and project discussions should remain publicly accessible unless there is a specific reason otherwise.
Most development is coordinated through Octacity's teams, but people outside the organization may still explore repositories, report bugs, join discussions, and contribute to projects that accept public contributions.
Each repository defines its own contribution policy. It may be:
- Open for general public contributions
- Open for selected types of contributions
- Temporarily focused on internal development
- Maintained mainly by its assigned team
The repository README and contribution guidelines should clearly describe its current status.
Membership and public contribution are separate forms of participation.
Members belong to one of Octacity's teams and take part in the community's internal organization and long-term project work.
Public contributors do not need to be members. Anyone may contribute to repositories that welcome outside contributions, provided they follow the repository's guidelines and the Octacity Code of Conduct.
Contributing publicly does not automatically provide membership, though consistent participation may help someone become more involved with the community.
People interested in joining should review the membership repository.
New projects are normally proposed and developed through one of the main teams.
A project proposal should:
- Have a clear purpose
- Be suitable for collaborative development
- Have a realistic initial scope
- Provide value as an open-source project
- Allow room for continued contribution and maintenance
- Avoid unnecessarily duplicating an existing project
- Have a team prepared to maintain it over time
A proposal should explain both how the project will begin and how it can remain active after its initial implementation.
Octacity aims to:
- Build useful and maintainable open-source projects
- Provide a stable environment for long-term collaboration
- Give members experience working in real project teams
- Help contributors learn through practical participation
- Encourage collaboration across teams and disciplines
- Make technical decisions and development processes visible
- Share knowledge across the community
- Help members take on greater responsibility over time
Project progress, technical discussions, and important decisions should be publicly documented whenever practical.
Creating a repository is only the beginning. Teams should consider maintenance, documentation, reliability, and future contributors.
Members improve by working on real problems, reviewing existing work, and collaborating with others.
Teams may organize their members, responsibilities, projects, and subteams according to their needs.
A project's maintaining team provides direction, but knowledge and contributions should move freely throughout the community.
Projects should develop through realistic, reviewable, and maintainable steps rather than unnecessary complexity.
Technical disagreement is welcome, but discussion must remain constructive and focused on the work.
To contribute publicly:
- Explore the repositories under the Octacity organization.
- Check whether the repository currently accepts public contributions.
- Read its documentation and contribution guidelines.
- Review open issues and discussions.
- Discuss significant changes before beginning implementation.
- Submit the contribution through the process defined by the repository.
Before participating, please review:
Individual repositories may define additional requirements.
Experienced members and external mentors may support teams by reviewing work, helping define realistic scopes, providing technical guidance, and sharing experience.
Mentorship should help contributors understand problems and develop independent judgment. It is not intended to replace their work or responsibility.
Project-related communication should take place through GitHub issues, pull requests, discussions, and repository documentation whenever practical.
Teams may use internal channels for coordination, but important information affecting a public project should be documented in the relevant repository.
Octacity welcomes people interested in contributing to long-term open-source projects and participating in a collaborative community.
Prospective members should review the information and application process in the membership repository.
