Open source software projects typically have two governance structures, one manages the leadership and strategic roadmap and the second manages the source code. Both are critical to the success of a software development initiative but when working with open source software, which allows contributions from virtually anyone, management of the source code is critical to the survival of the product.

In December 2014, Fedora 4 was officially released after two years of planning and development. Yale’s contributions to the creation of Fedora 4 includes financial commitments as well as staffing. From the Digital Library Programming Services group in Library IT, Osman Din and Eric James have made substantial contributions to the development of Fedora 4 since July 2013.

Now that Fedora 4 has moved from a beta platform to a production worthy application, the Fedora Leadership Committee recommended to form the governance structure for maintaining the source code. The nominees included the top contributing programmers from all partner institutions. Osman Din from Yale was nominated and accepted a position in the Fedora Committers group. The full list with roles and responsibilities can be viewed here.