Explanation of Teams

Introduction

You'll quickly notice the PCGen has a Monkey theme. Bryan McRoberts chose "Chief Code Monkey" as his title when he first made PCGen available to the public, and later adopted the title of Benevolent Dictator. Other teams formed to focus on different aspects of PCGen, and all have taken to referring to themselves as Monkeys. In the Documentation provided with PCGen and in the About box of the actual software we try to list everyone who has contributed to PCGen in chronological order.

Benevolent Dictator

A common term to refer to the Project Creator for an Open Source Project, in this case Bryan McRoberts.

Chair Monkey

The Chair Monkey works with the Board of Directors to ensure that the project runs as smoothly as possible and is often a neutral port of call for warring Monkeys :). The current Chair Monkey is Karianna (aka Martijn Verburg).

Monkey Ranks

In keeping with the Monkey theme a ranking system has evolved as a way to express appreciation and confer status to those who have contributed their time and energy to the project. These monkey ranks are listed below in decreasing order of precedence.

Silverback

The highest rank within the PCGen Team is that of Silverback. The Silverbacks are the leaders of the teams that make up the PCGen project and hold seats on the Board of Directors. The responsibilities of the Silverback include determining how their team should be run, the overall goals of the team, and how these goals in turn fits in with the overall goals of the project. The Silverbacks have a 2nd for each sub team. Finally, promoting Monkeys within the team is generally the privilege of the teams Silverback. Silverbacks are also really impressive Gorillas, see the Wikipedia Reference article on these amazing creatures!

Second

2nd is a rank that we give to leaders of permanent sub teams. They are effectively the same as a Chimp but have a permanent team responsibility and can also substitute for a Silverback on the PCGen BoD.

Chimp

Chimp is the rank we give to team members who are true gurus and experts in an area on PCGen and have also contributed a great deal. Chimps are often leaders of smaller teams or one monkey machines in getting stuff done. Chimps are also really cool apes, see the Wikipedia Reference article on these amazing creatures!

Gibbon

Gibbon is the rank we give to team members who have contributed a good deal to the project and are considered to be capable of tackling tasks on their own initiative due to their solid understanding of their area in PCGen. Gibbons are like the NCOs of the PCGen team. Gibbons are also really cool monkeys, see the Wikipedia Reference article on these amazing creatures!

Tamarin

Tamarin is the rank we give to team members who have contributed more than just a couple of items to the project and have a good basic understanding of how to do things in PCGen for their area. Tamarins are a good place to start asking questions as they are at the coal face. Tamarins are also really cute little monkeys, see the Wikipedia Reference article on these amazing creatures!

Lemur

Lemur is the rank we give to team members who have started working in a team and have contributed something, whether it be large or small, to the project. Lemurs are still learning their way around the wolrd of PCGen but a much valued contributors. Lemurs are also really cute little monkeys, see the Wikipedia Reference article on these amazing creatures!

Joining the project

PCGen is an Open Source Software Initiative and as such relies entirely on the efforts of many volunteers. The project is always in need of more volunteers, if you would like to join we would love to have you. The easiest way to join is to post a message to the pcgen message board with the subject of "I want to help" and you will be contacted by a Tracker Monkey and asked what area you would like to contribute to. You may also contact the Silverback of a team you are interested in joining directly. A list of the Silverbacks can be found in the BoD

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors (BoD) is the steering committee of PCGen, its members consist of the Team Leads from each team. It had overall governance of the project and is lead by the Chair Monkey.

Architecture

This team works on the medium and long term gnarly architectural issues for PCGen, dealing with things such as Internationalization, replacing the data layer etc.

Code

This team works on the Java code, fixing Bugs and developing FREQs (Feature Requests).

Content

Content encompasses Data, Documentation, Output Sheets and other non-Java code project files.

Data

This team works on the data for all the books you load in PCGen. They help answer data questions at the PCGenListFileHelp. They have pcgen_experimental group where they actually work on the different books we're trying to get into PCGen.

Documentation

This team works on the Documentation, this is a massive effort combing How To guides, Data and OS tags, FAQ and much, much more.

OS

This team works on the output sheets which are used to export to character sheets in PCGen. These templates involve XML, XSL, PDF and HTML/XHTML.

Admin

This is the team that administers the project as a whole. They amongst other things monitor the PCGen yahoo site and consist of three sub teams.

Tracker

They also prioritize all Trackers and provide assistance to all teams in a co-ordination role.

Release

This team gathers all the elements and compiles the code to create the packages that are released to the public.

Website

This team is the newest formed team; it's first tasked with finding a permanent website space to call home and building a fully operational website to facilitate our many needs. Once phase I is completed they will monitor and maintain the website. They have a tough job currently of merging our many groups and websites into one unified and professional website with the full capabilities we already enjoy today, plus more enhancements.

Public Relations

The PR team covers dealing with the various stakeholders in PCGen's community, in particular the Publishers.

Publisher Liaison

This team servers as the contact for all the Publishers. This way all contact with Publishers can be more easily managed and consistent.

OGL

This team is named after the Open Gaming License that made the popularity of 3e/3.5e possible. This team makes sure that all material included in PCGen meets any license requirements (not just the OGL).

Advertising

This team deals with PCGen's advertising budget and where and when the advertising should occur.

That should just about cover it!