ImageJ

Template:Development The ImageJ project, and related projects in the SciJava software ecosystem, are governed as Open Source software projects. Everybody is welcome to contribute with plugins, patches, bug reports, tutorials, documentation, and artwork.

That said, every project needs leaders: the ones who participate in governance of the project, maintaining the software and making key decisions.

Project roles

Because open source software is highly collaborative, it is extremely important to understand the difference between various roles on the project, to avoid misconceptions about authority (who makes decisions) and responsibility (who must do the work) concerning each project.

The most common roles are:

• Founders are the people who originally launched the project.
• Leads are the people responsible for making final decisions. In the open source world these people are often referred to as benevolent dictators. Changes with a serious impact on the community are typically discussed on open channels first.
• Maintainers are the people who keep the project functional, fix bugs and make releases. They often make day to day decisions, and are typically involved in discussion with the project lead(s) regarding major decisions, although the lead has final decision-making authority.
• Developers are people who work on the project significantly or often. Typically they have direct push access to the source code. In some cases they make day to day decisions, depending on their experience and comfort level with the project.
• Contributors are people help with the project either currently or in the past. They may participate occasionally or sporadically, and are typically not involved in project decision making.

SciJava projects

Here is a summary of roles for some projects in the SciJava ecosystem.

Project	Founders	Leads	Maintainers	Developers	Contributors
SciJava	Josh Moore Curtis Rueden	Curtis Rueden	Curtis Rueden Johannes Schindelin	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
ImgLib2	Stephan Saalfeld Stephan Preibisch	Tobias Pietzsch1 Stephan Preibisch Stephan Saalfeld	Tobias Pietzsch Curtis Rueden Mark Hiner Stephan Preibisch Stephan Saalfeld	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
ImageJ1	Wayne Rasband	Wayne Rasband	Wayne Rasband Johannes Schindelin Curtis Rueden	Wayne Rasband	See release notes
ImageJ2	Curtis Rueden Kevin Eliceiri	Curtis Rueden	Curtis Rueden Mark Hiner	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
SCIFIO	Curtis Rueden Kevin Eliceiri	Mark Hiner Curtis Rueden	Mark Hiner Curtis Rueden	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
Fiji	Johannes Schindelin Albert Cardona	Johannes Schindelin	Johannes Schindelin Curtis Rueden Mark Hiner	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
TrakEM2	Albert Cardona	Albert Cardona	Albert Cardona Stephan Saalfeld Curtis Rueden	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
Bio-Formats	Curtis Rueden Kevin Eliceiri	Melissa Linkert	Melissa Linkert Curtis Rueden2	See the list on GitHub	See OME Contributors
KNIME3	Christian Dietz	Christian Dietz	Christian Dietz	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors
CellProfiler	Lee Kamentsky Anne Carpenter	Lee Kamentsky	Lee Kamentsky	See the list on GitHub	See Contributors

¹ Pietzsch leads on day to day issues. Pietzsch, Preibisch and Saalfeld vote on primary decisions, with Pietzsch's vote breaking ties.
² Rueden maintains the Bio-Formats update site for ImageJ, but is not otherwise a Bio-Formats maintainer.
³ For the purposes of this table, "KNIME" means the KNIME Image Processing extensions, not the KNIME project as a whole.

Further reading

• OSS Watch's article on Governance Models
• Eric S. Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere
• Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar