Stencil Reframed: Community-Driven Governance Takes Center Stage
Stencil has become an essential tool for companies of all sizes who are building sustainable design systems. These design systems enable teams to deliver exceptional user experiences across multiple platforms, whether they’re building applications with React, Angular, or Vue. Today, I’d like to share some important updates about Stencil’s governance structure and future.
A Brief History
Stencil was originally developed as a core project within Ionic, which was acquired by OutSystems at the end of 2022. Throughout this transition, both Ionic and now OutSystems have maintained a strong commitment to Stencil’s development, as well as adjacent projects like the Ionic Framework.
Over the years, our core team has evolved, with new contributors joining and some team members moving on to new endeavors. This natural evolution has brought fresh perspectives and expertise to the project.
New Governance Structure
I’m excited to announce that Stencil is now establishing itself as a separate entity from Ionic and OutSystems, with its own governance structure. This represents an important step in Stencil’s maturity as an open-source project.
The Stencil core team now consists of members from OutSystems alongside external contributors, forming the Stencil Technical Steering Committee (TSC). This committee is responsible for guiding the technical direction of the project, making key decisions about features, architecture, and roadmap priorities.
While the intellectual property of the Stencil project currently remains with OutSystems, the day-to-day development and decision-making are now in the hands of this broader, more diverse committee.
To facilitate community engagement, we’ve launched a new Discord server dedicated to the Stencil community. We invite you all to join us and discuss development, share ideas, and collaborate.
Project Restructuring
As part of this transition, we’ve relocated all Stencil-related projects to a new GitHub organization. This move allows for clearer organization and autonomy for the project.
A significant operational change is that all members of the TSC now have release permissions for Stencil and its adjacent projects. This distributed responsibility enables us to be more responsive to community needs and faster in delivering improvements.
Looking Ahead
The future of Stencil lies in the hands of its community. We’re more committed than ever to the principles of open-source development and community governance. Whether you’re a long-time user or new to the project, we invite you to contribute to Stencil’s continued growth and success.
There are many ways to get involved: contributing code, improving documentation, reporting bugs, or simply sharing your experiences and feedback. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps make Stencil better for everyone.
Join us on this exciting new chapter as we build the future of web components and design systems together. The Stencil community has always been our greatest strength, and we look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together.
