We have some exciting news to share. The Peachpie project has officially joined Microsoft’s .NET Foundation. This article will explain what this means for us and for the community.
As Jon Galloway, Executive Director of the .NET Foundation, announced today, Peachpie has joined the .NET Foundation!
What are the benefits for Peachpie?
The .NET Foundation is an organization formed by Microsoft, but operating independently from the Redmond-based software giant. The objective of the Foundation is to “foster open development and collaboration around the .NET ecosystem” – essentially to promote open source software that expands and strengthens the .NET platform.
First and foremost, we are honored and thrilled to join an elite group of popular open source projects, such as Roslyn, Cake or .NET Core itself (among many others). We worked hard for many years to create a project that is useful and to be taken seriously. Becoming a member of the .NET Foundation is a wonderful reward for all the hours and effort we put in to this project. It is worthy to mention that Peachpie is among the first projects to join the Foundation that were originally not a Microsoft venture.
As an organization, the .NET Foundation offers a number of important services and advantages to its member projects. What it doesn’t mean is that Microsoft has a financial stake or is providing monetary support to us. In fact, the .NET Foundation is completely independent of Microsoft and does not have the financial means to invest into other entities. What The .NET Foundation does provide is guidance and mentoring, as well as a number of important legal services, such as an infrastructure for an automated CLA management. That way, any contributions to our project from a member of the open source community is intellectually protected.
The Foundation will also promote Peachpie whenever possible through its own marketing ecosystem and provide us with the technical tools necessary to ensure that the project works efficiently, i.e. testing tools or SSL certificates.
What’s in it for you?
This is also a significant event for you as someone who is interested in the project in a way. Here are some of the ways in which it could benefit you:
- As a contributor:
- As a user:
- As a company:
- As the community:
When you make a contribution to the source code of the project, you will sign a CLA based on an automated mechanism the .NET Foundation will set up for us. That way, your code is properly protected and legally set up in the right way.
Your worst nightmare as a user is when a project you build your application around ceases to exist, because the developers stop working on it. Or what is at first advertised as free and open source all the sudden becomes paid. Our joining the .NET Foundation guarantees that the project will always remain open source and that there is a certain continuity to it. In other words – it will continue to exist even if we stop working on it, as it will be under the tutelage of a larger organization.
Similarly to the last point, you now have the certainty that Peachpie is governed by more than just us. Regardless of what happens to us, Peachpie is there to stay. With the help of the .NET Foundations, we can obtain SSL certificates to ensure the highest degree of security.
Finally, as the general community, the .NET Foundation now gives us the means to test everything we need as thoroughly as possible. One of the key functions of the Foundation is that it provides legal council to ensure the project follows the best possible guidelines and standards of open source development.
We are thrilled to become a member of the .NET Foundation and honored to be standing besides such fantastic projects.