About us

ALF e.V. is a registered non-profit (eingetragener Verein) based in Würzburg, Germany.

In 2017, as the ALF code matured, was openly released, and management increasingly required more resources, we sought ways to make the open-source project sustainable in the long run. Early support from the DFG (German Research Foundation), starting in 2019, evolved into ALF Association being founded in 2022, with the goal of ensuring ALF’s sustainability based on the support from the scientific community.

Motivation

While writing new research software and using it for science might be funded by research grants, funding opportunities for maintaining established research software are scarce. Therefore, one of our key tasks is to raise funds to promote the project’s continued growth.

We dedicate our resources to the package’s:

• maintenance
• improvement and
• user base support and growth

Activities

The association plays an important role in, among others, the realization of ALF User Workshops (e.g., 2024 Workshop), in advancing associated projects (e.g., Python interface pyALF and library model Hamiltonians) and in obtaining additional resources (e.g., Unitary Fund).

Its staff responsibilities range from code development to community building and it is responsible for tending ALF’s e-mail, its YouTube channel, the community’s Discord server as well as the package’s website.

Members

Most members of ALF e.V. are main contributors or users of the ALF package. The list of members is not public, but there is some overlap with the ALF Collaboration.

Repository

The Association has a public repository, where its bylaws and other documents can be found: https://github.com/ALF-eV/Association.