As many of you know, almost all successful open source projects have an independent foundation overseeing its growth. Good examples are the Sakai Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and Mozilla Foundation.
In a similar manner, for the BigBlueButton project, we are planning to setup an independent not-for-profit company (a foundation) to accelerate the growth and adoption of the BigBlueButton.
The plans to create a foundation have been in the works for a few months, but given the recent activity in the market, we wanted to let our community know our intent.
While we can’t use the term “Foundation” here in Canada, BigBlueButton Inc. will be a membership based organization that will elect a board of directors, which, in turn, will elect an Executive Director. BigBlueButton Inc. will hold the license for the source code, the trademark for “BigBlueButton”, and represent the members as it carries out its mission, currently drafted as follows:
- BigBlueButton Inc. is a vendor-neutral, non-profit company, whose mission is to double the value of remote students’ academic experiences and reduce the cost of institutions responsible for delivering these experiences by 50%.
- BigBlueButton Inc. accomplishes its mission by becoming a keystone of a business ecosystem that provides strategic advantages to its members. The goal is to help remote students succeed academically and academic institutions and businesses succeed commercially worldwide.
If you are interested in knowing giving feedback or participating in the foundation, don’t hesitate to contact me at ffdixon at bigbluebutton dot org.
