A while back I began to have some concern about the future of NUnit. I was entering my 70s and I knew I wanted to spend more time on other things. NUnit had been very much my project for a few years and I didn't want it to die when I was no longer maintaining it.

Starting about three years ago, we began the process of phasing me out of the project. It was difficult and time-consuming but now the transition is pretty well complete. Today, we have a much larger group of contributors and team members than ever before. I'm still involved but my level of participation is much reduced.

The NUnit Project is now run by a team (the Core Team) rather than an individual and is supported by the .NET foundation. The Core Team consists of Rob Prouse (chair), Terje Sandstrom, Chris Maddock, Joseph Musser and myself. The Core Team makes the big decisions, similar to a board of directors, rather than running individual projects. Each of the projects under NUnit has it's own team and team leader, although there is a fair amount of overlap. I think that's a great formula for future success.

With a decentralized structure like this, there is both an opportunity and a need for more people to step up into leadership positions. I hope more people will join the developers of NUnit as time goes on and that some of you who have been involved for a while will consider taking responsibility for some of the projects or subprojects we operate.

For myself, I'll continue to be a member of the Core Team and will continue to contribute to the codebase. But most of my open source work will be in other projects, some related to NUnit and some more independent. I'll be posting here about some of the things I'm working on as they come closer to fruition, so please follow me here if you are interested.

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The Morning Brew - Chris Alcock » The Morning Brew #2512, Wednesday, January 24, 2018