List of free and open-source software organizations

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following are notable organizations devoted to the advocacy, legal aid, financial aid, technical aid, governance, etc. of free and open-source software (FOSS) as a whole, or of one or more specific FOSS projects. For projects that have their own foundation or are part of an umbrella organization, the primary goal is often to provide a mechanism for funding development of the software.

For the most part, these organizations are structured as nonprofit/charity organizations.

This list does not include companies that aim to make money from free and open-source software.

Location-specific[]

Africa[]

  • Ma3bar – a United Nations-affiliated organization that promotes open source software within the Arab world.

Asia[]

Australia[]

  • Open Source Industry Australia – founded in 2004; promotes open source in Australia, as well as the use of Australian open source software and services around the world.

Europe[]

North America[]

South America[]

Oceania[]

Umbrella organizations[]

The following organizations host, and provide other services, for a variety of different open-source projects.

  • Apache Software Foundation – founded in 1999; manages the development of over 350 Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server.[1]
  • Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) – founded in 2015, to promote containers. It was announced with Kubernetes 1.0, an open source container cluster manager, which was contributed to the foundation by Google as a seed technology.
  • Eclipse Foundation – founded in 2004; supports the development of over 350 Eclipse projects, including the Eclipse IDE.
  • Free Software Foundation
  • GNOME
  • KDE
  • Linux Foundation – founded in 2000; supports the development of the Linux kernel, as well as over 60 other projects, only some of which are connected to Linux. Also does advocacy, training and standards.
  • OASIS Open - founded in 1993; provides communities with foundation-level support, IP and license management, governance, and outreach with an optional path for work to be recognized by de jure standards organizations and referenced in public procurement.
  • OW2
  • Open Source Initiative
  • Sahana Software Foundation – for humanitarian-related software
  • Software Freedom Conservancy – founded in 2006; hosts around 40 projects.
  • Software in the Public Interest (SPI) – founded in 1997, originally only for the Debian project; hosts around 35 projects, some of which are umbrella projects themselves.
  • VideoLAN – multimedia-related projects

Domain-specific organizations[]

The following organizations host open-source projects that relate to a specific technical area.

Project-specific organizations[]

A large number of single-project organizations (often called "foundations") exist; in most cases, their primary purpose is to provide a mechanism to bring funds from the software's users, including both individuals and companies, to its developers.

Cause-specific[]

  • Ada Initiative – existed from 2011 to 2015; advocated the participation of women in FOSS development.
  • PyLadies – founded in 2011; advocates for female participation in the Python community.

Legal aid[]

  • IfrOSS – provides legal services for free software in Germany.
  • Software Freedom Law Center – founded in 2005; provides free legal representation and other legal services to not-for-profit FOSS projects.

User groups[]

  • GNU/Linux Users Groups
  • Linux user group – the general term for organizations of Linux users; see Category:Linux user groups.

References[]

  1. ^ "Apache Software Foundation". Apache Software Foundation. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  2. ^ X.Org Is Formally Invited To Become An SPI Project, Michael Larabel
  3. ^ About the NetBSD Foundation
  4. ^ VideoLAN – History
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