A Survey of Software Foundations in Open Source
This provides insights for open source projects and developers on selecting foundations, but it is incremental as it surveys existing structures without proposing new methods.
The study analyzed 101 software foundations in open source to understand their roles, revealing that many focus on promoting free software or legal aspects without engaging in daily project operations, highlighting that foundations do not eliminate the need for project-specific governance.
A number of software foundations have been created as legal instruments to better articulate the structure, collaboration and financial model of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. Some examples are the Apache, Linux, or Mozilla foundations. However, the mission and support provided by these foundations largely differ among them. In this paper we perform a study on the role of foundations in OSS development. We analyze the nature, activities, role and governance of 101 software foundations and then go deeper on the 27 having as concrete goal the development and evolution of specific open source projects (and not just generic actions to promote the free software movement or similar). Our results reveal the existence of a significant number of foundations with the sole purpose of promoting the free software movement and/or that limit themselves to core legal aspects but do not play any role in the day-to-day operations of the project (e.g., umbrella organizations for a large variety of projects). Therefore, while useful, foundations do not remove the need for specific projects to develop their own specific governance, contribution and development policies. A website to help projects to choose the foundation that best fits their needs is also available.