Center for Open-Source Research Software Stewardship and Advancement (CORSA)
CORSA is a community of practice dedicated to software sustainability for scientific and research software projects. Our mission is to provide a neutral and independent platform where projects can collaborate effectively, fostering excellence and innovation within the scientific and research software communities.
Foundation Membership - Benefits
Are you wondering what the benefits of joining an open source foundation are? Here is a list of some of the things that a project may gain from joining a foundation. Please contact us if you would like more information about foundations or would like assistance joining!
- Project leaders benefit from participation in the foundation’s network, which includes leaders from a variety of scientifically oriented open source computing communities
- Foundations can leverage their broad, international network to help build connections that support their projects
- Foundations create opportunities for project leaders to connect with one another as a group to learn lessons and share experiences
- Projects can benefit from elevated visibility as a result of their association with the foundation - via the foundation’s communications and marketing activities
- Foundations can showcase projects to potential funders, including government, philanthropy and industry
- Foundations can showcase projects to potential users
- Foundations can showcase projects to potential collaborators, possibly leading to a connected ecosystem/stack of coordinated projects
- A neutral home for the project outside of any one developer/maintainer’s organization
- The foundation can hire/contract global developers/maintainers
- The foundation can contract global developers/maintainers for short-term activities
- The foundation can protect the intellectual property associated with the project more effectively than an institution that doesn’t specialize in software
- Projects in the foundation can coordinate to acquire common services (e.g., CI platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) software, etc.)
- Foundations can provide good enough / best practices for common needs, such as governance, codes of conduct, roadmapping, DEI practices, licenses, contributing guidelines, etc.
- Foundations can incubate projects and help them progress, including a possible ramp-down or termination
- Foundations can help projects address security
- Foundations can help grow a diverse, skilled workforce for software in the open source ecosystem