Foundations Resources
Want to understand more about open source projects, governance, and foundations? We’ve picked out some of the best places out there to learn from. As with most of open source, we’re building on the work of many, many other excellent contributors out there.
Foundations, Governance, And Project Management
- Just getting started? Read TL;DR: FOSS for a basic primer.
- Looking to join a Foundation? We can help you Choose A Foundation.
- FLOSS Foundations includes a list of major groups and has networking for foundation leaders.
- GitHub’s own open source portal is useful, even if many foundation-led projects live elsewhere.
- The Open Source Initiative (OSI) defines what “open source” means and provides important licensing context.
- Martin Michlmayr provides a researched guide on how to grow FOSS Foundations.
- SOM Research group researched the scope, transparency, and independence of over 100 foundations.
Funding
Shane’s guide to FOSS Funding researches both how foundations are funded, and lists many ways your FOSS project can find financial support.
Sustainability
Sustainability is about maintaining a healthy open source ecosystem for individuals, projects, and software users alike. The word “sustainable” means so many different things, and this space is evolving quickly with new research, funding, and governance models.
Shane has a curated list of sustainability research papers, practical how-tos, and financial hosting examples and more.
Research
Many academic researchers are focusing on open source, both on technical topics and especially community governance and the effectiveness of distributed communities of collaborators. If you have useful research papers or topics to add here, please submit them!