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Open source project manifesto

Open source project manifesto

Owned by damian.hickey
Apr 18, 2025
2 min read

Version 1.0 | April 2025

Purpose

We believe business architecture should be accessible, transparent, and actionable by all organisations—regardless of size, sector, or maturity. The Orthogramic Metamodel exists to provide a modern, comprehensive, and open framework for representing the structure, strategy, performance, and interdependencies of organisations in a machine-readable, human-governable format.

Principles

a. Open by design
The Orthogramic Metamodel is freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence. Anyone can use, adapt, and redistribute the metamodel—provided derivative work is shared under the same terms.

b. Schema-first, not narrative-led
Every domain in the metamodel is defined using JSON Schema to ensure interoperability, validation, automation, and integration into enterprise platforms. We prioritise precision, structure, and extensibility over prose.

c. Completeness and clarity
The metamodel includes all domains essential to strategic alignment, including often-overlooked areas such as Policy, Performance, and Inter-unit domain relationships. Each domain is consistently structured using attributes, elements, and sub-elements.

d. Traceability and governance
The metamodel provides a framework for traceable connections between organisational units, strategies, capabilities, stakeholders, services, and initiatives—enabling structured analysis, transparency, and continuous alignment.

e. Independence from platforms
The Orthogramic Metamodel is not tied to any specific software platform. It is a standalone specification designed to be used by architects, analysts, developers, and decision-makers across multiple environments.

Community commitments

We invite practitioners, architects, analysts, and integrators to:

  • Use the metamodel in public and private sector projects

  • Extend the schema to suit sector-specific needs

  • Propose refinements via issue tracking and pull requests

  • Share implementation patterns, mappings, and use cases

All contributions should respect the spirit of open collaboration and follow the project’s contribution guidelines.

Stewardship

The metamodel is actively maintained by contributors aligned with the principles of open architecture, data transparency, and organisational alignment. Its roadmap is community-driven, with versioned releases and full changelogs published publicly.

Decisions about extensions, naming conventions, and schema consistency are made collaboratively, favouring clarity, utility, and alignment with real-world use.

Vision

We envision a future where:

  • Strategic alignment is measurable, transparent, and traceable

  • Organisations can dynamically adapt to change using open models

  • Business architecture evolves as an inclusive discipline supported by structured, validated models

  • Open standards replace closed reference models as the default for enterprise clarity

The Orthogramic Metamodel is a step toward that future.

 

See the Orthogramic Metamodel overview: Model overview or the Getting started guide

© Orthogramic 2024