Who’s behind Scala?
Scala was created by Prof. Martin Odersky at EPFL.
The Scala language and associated websites are cooperative projects of the following four groups:
- the Scala Center at EPFL
- the Scala 3 team in Martin’s research group LAMP (also at EPFL)
- the Scala team at Akka
- the Scala team at VirtusLab
and the Scala community more broadly, with participation from many companies, organizations, and individuals.
Who does what?
The main decision body is the Scala Core team which meets weekly to discuss issues within the language and its ecosystem.
The Scala Center focuses on coordinating governance, education (especially online courses), documentation, open source community outreach, and tooling. Community participation in all of these efforts is strongly encouraged.
Scala 2 maintenance is primarily handled by the Scala team at Akka. That team also participates in Scala 3 development.
VirtusLab focuses on infrastructure and tooling for Scala 3.
Scala 3 development is done by the compiler team currently listed at Scala Compiler Team page and Scala 2 maintainers list is located in the github README of the scala/scala repository.
For Scala 3, see also the Development guarantees, which describes in detail how the timing and contents of Scala 3 releases are arrived at.
Scala Improvement Process
The SIP is the primary mechanism for evolving the Scala language.
This process aims to evolve Scala openly and collaboratively. Anyone from the community is welcome to submit a Scala Improvement Proposal (SIP), which is then reviewed and discussed by a Committee. Every month, the Committee votes on the proposals to accept in the language.
For more information:
Contributing to the Scala Standard Library
The Scala 3 standard library is hosted in the scala/scala3 repository. Any changes that influence the standard library API should follow this process. If the changes are only internal, the process is the standard pull request one.
The person responsible for coordinating the process is the Scala Core Coordinator. Current Coordinator can be found on the Scala Core Team page.
Scala Center
This is the Scala language foundation coordinating Scala governance, community, education, and OSS library/tool development.
The Scala Center contributes to the language core, open source Scala tooling and libraries, and delivers high-quality education materials. It fosters conversations in the community and coordinates with various parties to unblock and improve the Scala ecosystem.
Joining the Center’s Advisory Board is an effective way to participate in Scala governance, have your voice heard, as well as supporting the Center to achieve its goals.
For more information: