On coreboot leadership…

Dear coreboot community!

I want to wholeheartedly thank every single one of you, who has contributed code to the coreboot project, reviewed code, improved our documentation in the wiki, or has contributed to the project by other means. You all have helped create a truly great project.

In 2014 alone, more coreboot devices have shipped than in all previous years combined! Since the start of coreboot v2 in 2003, 345 contributors have put over 12 thousand commits, an estimated effort of 457 years (COCOMO model) into the project. Since 2010, we have added support for all new Intel mobile and AMD R and G series processors. In the last year alone, we have added support for ARM/ARM64 SOCs from 7 vendors and, support for the MIPS and RISC-V architecture.

Leadership in the coreboot project tries to stay out of the way of free development. As part of our project culture, I strongly believe that individual contributors with their own stake in their work can drive the project strategy, creating a project that supports the broader vision of coreboot. Our community is cohesive and professional, making it easy for project leaders, first Ron, then since 2008 me, to let things mostly run themselves.

Lately the project has experienced a vast increase in contributions by commercial entities that aren’t as integrated in the project as Ron’s team or coresystems GmbH (my former company) both significant drivers of the coreboot vision and effort. In addition, things are moving at a much higher speed than a decade ago, providing an enormous challenge for everyone in the community improving and maintaining the code base, both individual contributors and corporate contributors. In April 2015 alone, we have integrated over 800 contributions, more than in the whole year of 2011.

As the project continues to rapidly scale up, many of us are working extremely hard to integrate commercial parties into the community in a way that improves cooperation and drives exchange between everybody involved in coreboot, while protecting and strengthening the spirit of the project. To overcome these many challenges, I have sought help from long time community members to ensure diverse points of view, share the load of organizational work, and organize commercial on-boarding. In short, these are the people I lean on when there are decisions to be made in the project. These folks, over time, became the coreboot leadership team. This team has grown from the community and is committed to serving the community by driving the project vision and strategy, organizing face-to-face events, and keeping the project infrastructure going. In addition to myself, the current leadership team includes:

  • Ronald Minnich – project founder
  • Marc Jones – passionate community and GSoC organizer, long time coreboot developer
  • Patrick Georgi – project infrastructure master, “keeper of sanity”
  • Aaron Durbin – contributed core architecture concepts to the coreboot code base

The leadership team’s role is to drive this project forward, along with a long list of influencers in the coreboot community. So many of you have provided leadership to the project and the community and have left your marks in many different ways. I will keep seeking input from anyone who can and will contribute. I rely on all of you to help make decisions and bring new ideas and energy to the table. Let me know if there are other strong contributors to the community who live the coreboot spirit that you think would be a great addition to the team.

As the coreboot project is growing, I am also looking to define a list of subsystem / block maintainers and core architects for coreboot that can help ensure the quality of all parts of coreboot with their subsystem specific knowledge. If you want to help with that, contact me!

All input and thoughts on how to create a stronger, more versatile, more diverse, and better community are always appreciated.

So long, and cheers to the next 15 years of coreboot,

Stefan Reinauer

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Stefan Reinauer

coreboot project leader