# Founders Letter
We the developers of Project Clarify, in order to form a more perfect software project, ensure justice, provide for our common computational infrastructure, promote the unburdened growth of our members, and secure the blessings of the liberty to pursue that which is most interesting and important to us naturally endowed by our being un- or under-paid, do ordain and establish this document that summarizes the core principles of Project Clarify.
Senior mentorship and a path to mastery. We seek to establish a prominent open source community that includes senior engineers from major technology companies. And in so doing not only attain greater ability to build great things but perhaps more importantly illustrate and support a long (but clear and instrumented) upward path for junior contributors and junior maintainers.
Participatory curriculum design. Student participants shall participate by communicating in regard to the efficacy of the current training curriculum, communicating in regard to their educational/training needs generally as well as those currently unmet, and participate in the design of novel means for achieving these within the context of the project.
Participatory strategy. No member entity shall represent the project as belonging to, subsidiary to, or individually managed or controlled by them nor seek to make it so. In contrast to such members dictating strategy, this strategy will be conceived of by developer-contributors in accordance with their interests and assessments of importance. We resolve to establish a means of faithfully representing this in the course of arriving at strategy before it is actioned.
Team. In contrast to a course and quite similarly to what graduates will encounter in industry - the project is a team of individuals working together to achieve common goals; including wherein individual attainment can at times undermine group attainment. We resolve to design means to enhance the effectiveness of the team while still providing sufficient dividends to individuals.
Purpose. That the project purpose shall be considered, generally, the pursuit of solutions to NAE grand challenge problems and the like. E.g. predicting the stock market is not in this objective set. We resolve to expand our current focus at least to advancing health informatics.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion. We recognize that an active and prioritized effort to support and grow our diversity is often not the first consideration in software projects but we resolve to make it among our highest priorities on account of the moral necessity of our doing so (our being in a position to do so). This shall be codified, instrumented, and most immediately implemented in our efforts to recruit and retain additional members from under-represented groups.
Warm regards,
The Founding Members