TWiki Foundation

Placeholder for a new foundation of TWiki. Initially discussed at JerusalemReleaseMeeting2012x03x02.

Plan

1. do research
2. decide if to join a foundation or to create one
3. join or incorporate
4. define initial structure where companies and people can donate money & how to allocate that money

1. Do Research

• TWikiFoundationSurvey2012
• Google has quite a bit of support for open source. Beside hosting they have something called summer of code where they pay students to participate in open source projects. I've joined the summer of code discussion group to learn more.
• Deadline for mentoring organization applications was March 9th. We should plan to submit an application next year as a way to build community.
• The Eclipse process for starting a new project is well documented. It is also quite extensive. The first series of steps is the how to create a review. For us, the process would includes trademark assignment. Quote "Trademark assignment is undertaken prior to the creation of any new project".

Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

• Incubation process to get accepted as a project, http://incubator.apache.org/
• How it works/philosophy, http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html
  • By philosophy TWiki.org are pretty close, should not be too difficult to morph into an ASF project
• Basic requirements for incubation are:
  • a working codebase -- check & stable
  • a sponsoring ASF member or officer -- needs to be identified
  • the intention to donate copyright of the software and the intellectual property to the foundation -- this could be a showstopper if we do not get the agreement by all copyright holders - PTh is OK
  • apply Apache License -- same potential showstopper

Values a TWiki foundation may bring to companies (draft)

• Ideas:
  • Continuous integration tools for admins.
  • A Foundation could fund development efforts that no one wants to fund individually and ensure the result is open source.
  • An app and plugin market place may be developed. Funds will be develop to jump start the critical mass of apps and developers to make the market place sustainable.
  • A foundation helps grow the ecosystem; once big enough it feeds itself.
  • Creating the bridge with the end users (organizations and companies) that use the technology is critical.
  • If we can enhance the idea of this technology as a true enabler of organizational processes in a simple way, organizations will see more value in the platform and adoption would even be greater.
  • The Foundation can fund developments in the methodology of using the technology.
  • Fund dashboards: Program managers and people managers LOVE dashboards.
  • Support efforts of the end users, meaning the learning, sales, marketing areas, who are the ones who are the ones paying for the applications and implementations.
  • The foundation must offer a clear vision of TWiki, a road map and development goals - this is important for companies who want to use TWiki.

-- Contributors: PeterThoeny, GeorgeTrubisky - 2012-03-02

Discussion

I archived the old discussions.

-- PeterThoeny - 2012-02-29