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2025-10-A: Longhouse Cycle Review

Overview​

written by @Gnuxie

Milestone: https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/planning/milestone/1

It's become clear to me that I need to feel closer to draupnir users in order to continue effective development of the project. And to achieve this, I've worked to create new governance and planning changes for the project. With the primary aim of giving draupnir users control over the project direction. And a way to affirm contributors for the work being done.

As a part of this, development conducted by the root contribution circle will now take place over cycles that aren't bounded by time. Cycles are used to work on iterations of work and report back to the community on the results. Adding accountability between core contributors and users. This is done in a way that explicitly preserves voluntary association in both directions.

Direction​

The longer context of this is that the goals of the NLnet grant were designed when I was less experienced at project management, and this meant that the roadmap was effectively rigid. This meant that we were opportunistically at a major disadvantage. To adapt the roadmap to changes in circumstance, such as the need for homeserver admin tools earlier in the year, and project hydra itself, meant putting NLnet work on hold. Additionally, we didn't have a mechanism to receive affirmation or support for the decisions that we made to suspend that work. And I think that such a mechanism is needed because I crashed out a number of times. Draupnir is not just some personal project, it is an obligation and this work is responsible for the continuance of a lot of communities.

The NLnet grant itself will be expiring in December. And for full transparency I have received around €9.7k in total from NLnet to support development that has been going on for well over a year. This has been my main income, and only income outside of my ko-fi and GitHub sponsors, since 2022, and this has allowed me to develop Draupnir as a primary occupation. I'm incredibly grateful for the grant, but I need to make clear that this is a grant that kept Draupnir afloat and there has to be a more sustainable solution for the project. In addition, I have mostly supported this work with savings I made from my from prior jobs and living as frugally as a student, at great sacrifice to myself.

Therefore it's desirable to close off some milestones before the grant expires so that development can continue into 2026. And this will mean putting project hydra mitigation (room upgrade support) on hold.

The aim of the governance rework that has taken place is simply to confirm that the work being done on this project is valuable to its users.

Completed work this cycle​

Note: this isn't all work that has been completed, this section just relates to the goals of the cycle.

  • Entirely new governance documentation for the project.

  • A news reader in Draupnir to inform end users about development progress and updates.

  • A new planning system has been designed to support open decision making. It's not entirely new, but more documenting and formalising the system that was already in use, then revising it a couple of times.

  • A new Matrix space to facilitate feedback and governance participation, called the Draupnir longhouse.