Commonhaus Foundation - A forever home for open source projects
Commonhaus Foundation inspired by legacy Codehaus is a non-profit organization dedicated to the sustainability of open source libraries and frameworks. Codehaus was a platform for development and code hosting of Java based projects. It was providing complete eco-system like source control, issue tracking, continuous builds, and community support mechanisms like mailing lists and IRC for Java projects. Codehaus was closed down in 2015.
Commonhaus provides Long term sustainability, Succession planning, Governance model, Fiscal sponsorship, Guidance and support for open source projects. It provides a collaborative platform where developers, contributors, and users can support each other which helps in the long term sustainability of the projects. The Commonhaus Foundation launched on March 2024 and at launch few open source projects like Hibernate, Jackson, OpenRewrite, JBang, JReleaser, and Morphia have joined the foundation.
Erin Schnabel is the founder and current chairperson of the Commonhaus Foundation. Commonhaus has defined their governance model in Bylaws. In the Bylaws, they have defined the code of conduct for Advisory Board, Council members, Decision Making, Voting and Election process etc.
Now the question comes, Why do we require Commonhaus Foundation when there many other organization like Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation, Eclipse Foundation already exist?
All these organization provide similar support but they do have restrictions in licensing, infrastructure and project branding. Projects under Apache foundation has to be licensed under Apache and projects under Eclipse foundation has to follow Eclipse Public License (EPL). In addition to that, these foundation prefers to use their name as the prefix to the project.
The Commonhaus Foundation respects the autonomy of projects, allowing them to maintain their current infrastructure and processes upon joining. They offer flexibility in licensing, supporting a broader array of OSI-approved licenses beyond the Apache-2.0.
To join the Foundation, open source maintainers can reach out the community members and discuss about the selection process. Sponsors can provide sponsorship to the Foundation through Github sponsorship or Open Collective.