The following are notable organizations devoted to the advocacy, legal aid, financial aid, technical aid, governance, etc. of

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

(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 The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

Asia

Free Software Movement of India Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) is a national coalition of various regional and sectoral free software movements operating in different parts of India. The formation of FSMI was announced in the valedictory function of the National Free Sof ...

– founded in 2010; a coalition of organizations that advocate the use of free software within India. ** Regional movements *** Democratic Alliance of Knowledge Front, Kerala (abbrv. DAKF) *** Free Software Movement of Delhi/NCR ***

Free Software Movement of Karnataka Free Software Movement Karnataka (FSMK) is a non-profit organization working for spreading free software and its ideals. The movement is inspired by software freedom visionaries like Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. FSMK is one of the member or ...

(abbrv. FSMK) *** Free Software Movement of Maharashtra (abbrv. FSMM) *** Free Software Movement of Rajasthan *** Free Software Foundation Tamilnadu (abbrv. FSFTN) *** Free Software Movement of West Bengal *** Swadhin, Odisha *** Swecha, Telangana & Andhra Pradesh ** Sectoral movements *** Appropriate Technology Promotion Society *** Knowledge Commons *** National Consultative Committee of Computer Teachers Association(abbrv. NCCCTA) ***

Open Source Geospatial Foundation The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 20 ...

India (abbrv. OSGEO India) *

Free Software Foundation of India The Free Software Foundation of India (FSFI) is the Indian sister organisation to the US-based Free Software Foundation. It was founded in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) (the capital of Kerala) in 2001 as a non-profit Company. The FSFI advoc ...

(founded 2001) * International Center for Free and Opensource Software – founded in 2011; ICFOSS is an autonomous organization set up by the Government of Kerala, India for Free and Open Source Software. * International Open Source Network – promoted the use of open-source software in Asia. * Open Source Alliance of Central Asia – founded in 2011; advocates for the use of open source software in Central Asia. *

Hamakor Hamakor ( he, המקור), officially known as Hamakor – Israeli Society for Free and Open Source Software ( he, המקור – עמותה ישראלית לתוכנה חופשית ולקוד־מקור פתוח), is an Israeli non-profit orga ...

– founded in 2003; promotes the use of free and open-source software in Israel.

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

Free Software Foundation Europe The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an ''eingetragener Verein'' (registered voluntary association) under German law. It was founded in 2001 to support all aspects of the free software movement in Europe, with registered chapters in sev ...

(founded 2001) * Irish Free Software Organisation – promotes the use of free software in Ireland. *

OpenForum Europe OpenForum Europe (OFE) is a European open source software and open standard not-for-profit think tank. Its key objective is to contribute to achieve an open and competitive digital ecosystem in Europe. Based in Brussels, it launched its operati ...

– founded in 2002; advocates for the use of open source software in Europe. * Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) – founded in 2008; promotes the use of open-source software, open hardware, open data and content in education, in government and the private sector, at all levels, in Greece and cooperates closely with similar organizations in Europe and worldwide. *

Open Source Observatory and Repository The Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) is an online project launched by the European Commission under the IDABC programme, to support the distribution and re-use of software developed by or for public sector administrations across E ...

– a project launched by the European Commission, to support the distribution and re-use of software developed by or for public sector administrations across Europe *

April April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. It is the first of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the second of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. April is commonly associated with ...

– founded in 1996; promotes free software in the French-speaking world. * Associação Nacional para o Software Livre – founded in 2001; promotes the use of free software in Portugal. * Digital Freedom Foundation (DFF) – founded in 2004; organizes

Software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

and other Freedom Days
"Ceata" Foundation
Romania - officially founded in 2013, but active since 2008 as an informal group
"ProLinux" Association
Romania - founded in 2009
"ROSEdu" Association
Romania
"Informatica la Castel" Free Software Summer School
Arad, Romania - founded in 2003 * Open Source Business Alliance, Germany.

North America

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("s ...

(FSF) – founded in 1985; began as a development center for the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing devi ...

. It currently advocates for free software and against proprietary software and formats; and maintains and legally enforces the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

. It also created

the Free Software Definition The Free Software Definition written by Richard Stallman and published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as being software that ensures that the end users have freedom in using, studying, sharing and modifying that softw ...

. *

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The organization w ...

(OSI) – founded in 1998; promotes open source software from a pragmatic rather than moral perspective. Also created

the Open Source Definition ''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark. The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...

. *

Open Source for America Open Source for America (OSFA) consortium of various organizations established to advocate for and support the use of free and open-source software in the U.S. Federal government. It consists of various open source foundations, and companies, incl ...

(OSFA) – a consortium of organizations advocating for the use of FOSS in the United States. **

Mil-OSS Mil-OSS, also known as the Military Open Source Software Working Group, is a group that promotes the use and creation of open-source software in the United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or D ...

– founded in 2009; promotes the use of open-source software in the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

. *

Open Source Software Institute The Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) is a U.S.-based 501(c)(6), non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within US Federal, state and municipal government agencie ...

(OSSI) – founded in 2000; promotes the use of open-source software in the United States within government, at all levels. * Fairfield Programming Association (FPA) – founded in 2020; focused on education and creating open-source software as learning resources.

South America

Free Software Foundation Latin America Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) is the Latin American sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation. It is the fourth sister organisation of FSF, after Free Software Foundation Europe and Free Software Foundation India. It w ...

(founded 2005) * Fundación Vía Libre – founded in 2000; advocates digital rights and the use of free software in Latin America, especially within government.

Oceania

New Zealand Open Source Society The New Zealand Open Source Society is an incorporated society supporting the advocacy and promotion of open-source software in New Zealand. History Formation NZOSS was formed in February 2003, after David Lane wrote an open letter suggesting t ...

– founded in 2003; promotes the use of open-source software in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

. *

Free Software Initiative of Japan The Free Software Initiative of Japan are a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development. It was founded on 10 July 2002 and organized the Free Software Symposium in Tokyo on October 22 and 23 of that year. Th ...

– founded in 2002; supports free software within Japan

Umbrella organizations

The following organizations host, and provide other services, for a variety of different open-source projects: * Apache Software Foundation (ASF) – founded in 1999 with headquarters in Wakefield, MA, USA; manages the development of over 350 Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. *

Eclipse Foundation The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization supp ...

– founded in 2004 with headquarters in Ottawa, ON, Canada; supports the development of over 350 Eclipse projects, including the

Eclipse IDE Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. It is the second-most-popular IDE for Java development, and, un ...

. *

(FSF) – founded in 1985 with headquarters in Boston, MA, USA; supports the

free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...

, which promotes the universal freedom to study, distribute, create, and modify computer software *

GNOME Foundation GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Orinda, California, United States, coordinating the efforts in the GNOME project. Purpose The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a computing platfo ...

– founded in 2000 with headquarters in Orinda, CA, USA; coordinates the efforts of the

GNOME Project GNOME Project is a community behind the GNOME desktop environment and the software platform upon which it is based. It consists of all the software developers, artists, writers, translators, other contributors, and active users of GNOME. It is n ...

, including GNOME * KDE e.V. – founded in 1997 with headquarters in Berlin, Germany; coordinates the efforts of

KDE Projects KDE Projects are projects maintained by the KDE community, a group of people developing and advocating free software for everyday use, for example KDE Plasma and KDE Frameworks or applications such as Amarok, Krita or Digikam. There are also non ...

including

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Addi ...

(LF) – founded in 2000 with headquarters in San Francisco, CA, USA; supports the development of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

, as well as over 60 other projects, only some of which are connected to

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. Also does advocacy, training and standards. **

Cloud Native Computing Foundation The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a Linux Foundation project that was founded in 2015 to help advance container technology and align the tech industry around its evolution. It was announced alongside Kubernetes 1.0, an open sourc ...

(CNCF) – founded in 2015, to promote

containers A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

. It was announced with

Kubernetes Kubernetes (, commonly stylized as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintai ...

1.0, an open source container cluster manager, which was contributed to the foundation by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

as a seed technology.
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.
OpenInfra Foundation
– founded in 2012 with headquarters in Austin, TX; focused on the development and support of open source infrastructure projects, including

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software platfo ...

. Previously known as the OpenStack Foundation. *

OW2 OW2 is an independent non-profit international consortium dedicated to developing open-source software code infrastructure for middleware information systems. OW2 federates IT vendors and users, universities, and research centers from Europe, ...

– founded in 2007 with headquarters in Paris, France; focused on infrastructure for enterprise middleware *

(OSI) – founded in 1998 with headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, USA; steward of the

Open Source Definition ''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark. The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...

, the set of rules that define open source software *

Sahana Software Foundation Sahana Software Foundation is a Los Angeles, California-based non-profit organization founded to promote the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) for disaster and emergency management. The foundation's mission statement is to "save lives b ...

– founded in 2009 with headquarters in Los Angeles, CA, USA; for humanitarian-related software *

Software Freedom Conservancy Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is an organization that provides a non-profit home and infrastructure support for free and open source software projects. The organization was established in 2006, and as of June 2022, had over 40 member proj ...

– founded in 2006 with headquarters in New York, NY, USA; hosts around 40 projects. *

Software in the Public Interest Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization domiciled in New York State formed to help other organizations create and distribute free open-source software and open-source hardware. Anyone is eligible to ...

(SPI) – founded in 1997 with headquarters in New York, NY, USA; originally only for the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

project, it now hosts around 35 projects, some of which are umbrella projects themselves. *

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization which software development, develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two computer program, programs for media streaming media, streaming, ...

– founded in 2009 with headquarters in Paris, France; multimedia-related projects

Domain-specific organizations

The following organizations host open-source projects that relate to a specific technical area. * freedesktop.org – founded in 2000; hosted by SPI since 2015. Hosts around 25 projects, mostly related to the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting ...

. *

Open Bioinformatics Foundation The Open Bioinformatics Foundation is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization focused on supporting open source programming in bioinformatics. The mission of the foundation is to support the development of open source toolkits for bioinformatics, ...

– founded in 2001; hosted by SPI since 2012. Hosts around 10

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combin ...

projects. *

– founded in 2006; hosts roughly 25 projects related to

geospatial technology Geoinformatics is the science and the technology which develops and uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geography, cartography, geosciences and related branches of science and engineering, such as Land Surveying. O ...

. *

Open Source Security Foundation The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is a cross-industry forum for a collaborative effort to improve open-source software security. The list of founding governing board members includes GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, ...

– founded in 2020 *

OSADL The Open Source Automation Development Lab eG (OSADL) is a German organization intended to promote and coordinate the development of open source software for the machine, machine tool, and automation industry. , it has more than 40 member compan ...

– founded in 2005; supports the development of various projects, mostly

-based, for the machine tool and automation industries. *

Xiph.Org Foundation Xiph.Org Foundation is a nonprofit organization that produces free multimedia formats and software tools. It focuses on the Ogg family of formats, the most successful of which has been Vorbis, an open and freely licensed audio format and codec de ...

– founded in 1994 as the "Xiphophorus Company"; became a non-profit under its current name in 2003. Directly develops, and supports outside development of, multimedia-related software and formats.

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. *

.NET Foundation The .NET Foundation is an organization incorporated on March 31, 2014, by Microsoft to improve open-source software development and collaboration around the .NET Framework. It was launched at the annual Build 2014 conference held by Microsoft. T ...

– founded in 2014; supports the development of open-source projects around the

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

. *

Alliance for Open Media The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) is a non-profit industry consortium that develops open, royalty-free technology for multimedia delivery headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts. It uses the ideas and principles of open web standard develo ...

– founded in 2015; attempting to develop a royalty-free video format. *

Blender Foundation The Blender Foundation is a Dutch nonprofit organization ( Stichting) responsible for the development of Blender, an open source 3D content-creation program. The foundation has distributed the animated films ''Elephants Dream'' (2006), '' Big B ...

– founded in 2002; supports the development of the computer graphics software

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...

. * CE Linux Forum – founded in 2003; supports the development of

for

consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are Electronics, electronic (Analogue electronics, analog or digital electronics, digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for ...

devices. * Django Software Foundation – founded in 2008; supports the development of the web framework Django. *

The Document Foundation The Document Foundation (TDF) is a non-profit organization that promotes open-source document handling software. It was created by members of the OpenOffice.org community to manage and develop LibreOffice, a free and open-source office suite, an ...

– founded in 2012; supports the development of the office suite

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite consi ...

. * Drupal Association – founded in 2009; does advocacy of the

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwid ...

content management system, including running the

DrupalCon Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide a ...

conference. * F# Software Foundation – founded in 2013; supports the development of the F# programming language. *

Firebird Foundation The Firebird Foundation is an organisation of individuals and companies of various sizes, working together as parts of a non-profit organisation that aims to ensure the continued development of the open source Firebird relational database and rela ...

– founded in 2002; supports the development of the relational database

Firebird Firebird and fire bird may refer to: Mythical birds * Phoenix (mythology), sacred firebird found in the mythologies of many cultures * Bennu, Egyptian firebird * Huma bird, Persian firebird * Firebird (Slavic folklore) Bird species ''Various spe ...

. * FreeBSD Foundation – founded in 2001; supports the development of the operating system

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

. *

– founded in 2000; coordinates the development of the GNOME desktop environment. * KDE e.V. – founded in 1997; supports the development of desktop applications by the

community. * Krita Foundation – founded in 2013; supports the development of the

Krita Krita ( ) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. The software runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and ChromeOS, and features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management su ...

digital painting application. *

Kuali Foundation The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation that develops open source enterprise resource planning software for higher education institutions. Kuali modules include Student, Financial, Human Resources, Research Administration, a ...

– founded in 2005; develops the Kuali family of enterprise resource planning software for higher education institutions. *

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

– founded in 2003; supports and manages development of the

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, w ...

project, in conjunction with the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of op ...

, a for-profit company it owns. * NetBSD Foundation – founded in 1995; supports the development of the operating system

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

. *

Open Invention Network Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty-free to its community members who, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux and Linux-related systems and applications. History The co ...

– founded in 2005; acquires patent non-assertion promises from its members towards other organization members, focused on Linux *

OpenBSD Foundation OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project empha ...

– founded in 2007; supports the development of the operating system

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking N ...

and its utilities. *

OpenStreetMap Foundation The OpenStreetMap Foundation (abbreviated OSMF) is a non-profit foundation whose aim is to support and enable the development of freely-reusable geospatial data. It is closely connected with the OpenStreetMap project, although its constitution do ...

– founded in 2006; supports the development of the

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed ...

mapping software. * Perl Foundation – founded in 2000; supports the development of the

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

programming language, including running

Yet Another Perl Conference Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC), from 2016–2019 called The Perl Conference (TPC), from 2020 on The Perl and Raku Conference, is a series of conferences discussing the Perl programming language, usually organized under the auspices of The Pe ...

.
Plone Foundation
– founded in 2004; supports the development of the

Plone Plone is a free and open source content management system (CMS) built on top of the Zope application server. Plone is positioned as an enterprise CMS and is commonly used for intranets and as part of the web presence of large organizations. Hi ...

web content management system. *

Python Software Foundation The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is an American nonprofit organization devoted to the Python programming language, launched on March 6, 2001. The mission of the foundation is to foster development of the Python community and is responsible for ...

– founded in 2001; supports the development of the Python programming language. *

The Rosetta Foundation The Rosetta Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes social localization, the process of making social services information available to individuals around the world in their native languages. The Rosetta Foundation was registere ...

– founded in 2009; develops the

Service-Oriented Localisation Architecture Solution The Service-Oriented Localisation Architecture Solution, or SOLAS , enables the global conversation in communities and is an open source project of The Rosetta Foundation. History SOLAS was conceived at The Rosetta Foundation Design Fest in San ...

. *

Ruby Central Ruby Central, Inc., is a non-profit organization based in the United States, dedicated to support and advocacy for the Ruby programming language. Ruby Central is the parent organization of the annual International Ruby and Ruby on Rails Conferenc ...

– founded in 2002; supports and advocates for the use of the

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...

programming language. *

Rust Foundation Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language. Rust emphasizes performance, type safety, and concurrency. Rust enforces memory safety—that is, that all references point to valid memory—without requiring the use of a garb ...

- founded in 2021; supports the

Rust programming language Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language. Rust emphasizes performance, type safety, and concurrency. Rust enforces memory safety—that is, that all references point to valid memory—without requiring the use of a garb ...

and ecosystem, with a unique focus on supporting the set of maintainers that govern and develop the project. *

– founded in 2009; develops the Sahana suite of disaster and emergency management software. * Signal Foundation – founded in 2018; supports the development of the encrypted communications application

Signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...

. *

SIPfoundry SIPfoundry is a non-profit organization that develops open-source telephone software projects based on the Session Initiation Protocol(SIP). Founded in 2004, SIPfoundry established ties with the SIP Forum. SIPfoundry promotes the standardization o ...

– founded in 2004; develops the sipXecs communications system, and does related advocacy. *

Sourcefabric Sourcefabric is a non-profit organisation that develops open source software for independent news media organisations. It is based in Prague, Czech Republic, with branches in Berlin, Germany and Toronto, Canada. Sourcefabric was spun off from the ...

– founded in 2010 as a spinoff from the Media Development Investment Fund; develops software for independent news media organizations. *

Symbian Foundation The Symbian Foundation was a non-profit organisation that stewarded the Symbian operating system for mobile phones which previously had been owned and licensed by Symbian Ltd. Symbian Foundation never directly developed the platform, but evangelis ...

– existed from 2008 to 2011; supported the development of the now-defunct

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian ...

operating system. *

– founded in 2009;VideoLAN – History
/ref> supports the development of the

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for d ...

and related software. *

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

- founded in 2003; develops

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...

and hosts related websites, such as the English

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...

X.Org Foundation The X.Org Foundation is a non-profit corporation chartered to research, develop, support, organize, administrate, standardize, promote, and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack. This includes, but is not limited to, the following p ...

– founded in 2004; hosted by SPI since 2014. Does funding and advocacy related to the X Window System. *

XMPP Standards Foundation XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is the foundation in charge of the standardization of the protocol extensions of XMPP, the open standard of instant messaging and presence of the IETF. History The XSF was originally called the Jabber Softwa ...

– founded in 2001 as the Jabber Software Foundation; renamed in 2007. Supports development around the

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), ...

communications protocol. *

Zope Foundation Zope is a family of free and open-source web application servers written in Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing method ...

– founded in 2006; it promotes the development of the

Zope Zope is a family of free and open-source web application servers written in Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing method ...

platform by supporting the community that develops and maintains the relevant software components.

Cause-specific

Ada Initiative The Ada Initiative was a non-profit organization that sought to increase women's participation in the free culture movement, open source technology and open culture. The organization was founded in 2011 by Linux kernel developer and open source a ...

– existed from 2011 to 2015; advocated the participation of women in FOSS development. *

PyLadies PyLadies is an international mentorship group which focuses on helping more women become active participants in the Python open-source community. It is part of the Python Software Foundation. It was started in Los Angeles in 2011. The mission of t ...

– founded in 2011; advocates for female participation in the Python community.

Legal aid

IfrOSS Institut für Rechtsfragen der Freien und Open Source Software, abbreviated to ifrOSS, (English: ''Institute for legal issues regarding free and open source software'') is a German organisation that provides legal services for free software. ifrOS ...

– provides legal services for free software in Germany. *

Software Freedom Law Center The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides '' pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/ open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Mogle ...

– 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 :Linux user groups.

References

{{FOSS