Assuming your project meets, or intends to soon meet, all of the requirements in our affiliated project policy, please create a GitHub issue with the following details:
- URL of the project
- Contact information for the project maintainers
- Proof of compliance with Affiliate Status requirements where possible, e.g. licence, code of conduct, etc. or plan to implement any missing requirements in the near future.
Filling out and submitting this issue template constitutes a formal request to be put on the next ballot for voting on OBF affiliation status. If your project has not previously been affiliated with the OBF, your application is for attaining Candidate OBF Project status. If your project is currently a Candidate OBF Project, then your application is for attaining Affiliated OBF Project status.
You can also feel free to drop us a line if you have questions about your eligibility before applying.
A: The benefits of affiliate status include access to umbrella resources such as domain / site hosting, mailing list hosting, a community of active open source developers, and a tremendous pool of open-source collaborative development know-how. Furthermore, affiliate status officially signifies that a project has met certain requirements promoting community and collaboration, which may improve its ability to attract more users as well as potential developers. Finally, OBF, through its fiscal sponsor SPI, can sustainably hold assets on behalf of a project, such as domain names, and financial assets, in a way that is robust to changes in the project's (and even OBF's) leadership, and that does not risk tax implications for an individual.
The obligations of affiliate status are few - primarily projects must remain active and maintain a good standing within the community, e.g. by enforcing their code of conduct if necessary.
A: The OBF is primarily a home for projects that are actively maintained. If you fear your project doesn't have enough community contributors we can share a call for contributors within the OBF community, but the OBF does not provide software maintenance services.
If by signing over ownership you only mean assigning intellectual property rights (in particular, copyright) for a project's source code artifacts to the OBF, please contact the OBF Board. Note that due to OBF's current status as an SPI-associated project, this would have to mean to assign copyright to the SPI. Note also that currently OBF does not own any intellectual property rights in any of its member projects, neither directly nor through the SPI.
Q: I'm interested in taking donations for my project, or I've recently received a grant. Can the OBF handle my cash flow?
A: The OBF can accept donations and grants on behalf of its member projects through SPI, the OBF's fiscal sponsor. The OBF also can, again through SPI, request the disbursement of funds earmarked for a member project. Management of cash flow with a high rate of transactions, will, however, likely exceed the capacity of SPI's (almost entirely volunteer) financial administrators, and we therefore advise projects expecting this need to apply independently for fiscal sponsorship. Organisations providing fiscal sponsorship for software projects include SPI, Software Freedom Conservancy, NumFocus, and OpenCollective.