The ChAoS Foundation

Supporting Open Source Beyond the Present


The ChAoS Foundation is a charitable organization in development by Team ChAoS to further the mission of the ChAoS open-source project and support the continued development, preservation, and availability of open-source and ChAoS-developed software.

The Foundation is being developed around a simple principle:

Open-source software should remain open, available, and capable of surviving beyond the people and organizations currently responsible for it.

Mission


The mission of the ChAoS Foundation is to support, preserve, and advance open-source software, with particular responsibility for ChAoS-developed software and the ecosystem surrounding the ChAoS MVC.

The Foundation is intended to help ensure that supported software remains freely accessible and that its source code continues to be available to future developers, users, organizations, and communities.

Why a Foundation?


People come and go.

Developers retire. Teams change. Businesses close. Organizations reorganize. Technologies evolve.

An open-source project should not depend indefinitely upon the continued existence of any one developer, contributor, business, or development team.

The ChAoS Foundation is therefore being developed to provide long-term continuity for the projects placed within its care.

Its purpose is not simply to support development today, but to help ensure that the source code, documentation, standards, and other resources necessary to sustain those projects remain available in the future.

Through that continuity, the Foundation seeks to help provide a stable and secure foundation upon which future generations of developers can continue to build.

ChAoS MVC


The ChAoS MVC is an open-source PHP MVC framework developed around a philosophy of maintaining a protected framework Core while allowing functionality to grow outward through modules, themes, pages, and related components.

The ChAoS Foundation is intended to support the long-term continuity of the ChAoS MVC project and its related ecosystem.

This includes helping preserve public access to the project and supporting the continued availability of its source code, documentation, development resources, and related software.

Open Source


The Foundation's purpose extends beyond simply preserving a single software project.

The ChAoS Foundation is intended to support open-source software and the principle that software placed into the open-source community should remain accessible to that community.

Projects supported by the Foundation may change over time as the organization develops, but preservation, continuity, accessibility, and responsible stewardship will remain central to its purpose.

Project Continuity


The Foundation is intended to provide a means through which supported projects can survive beyond their present contributor base.

Where appropriate, this may include stewardship of:

  • Source code
  • Project documentation
  • Development resources
  • Software releases
  • Project infrastructure
  • Standards and specifications
  • ChAoS-developed software
  • Other resources necessary for project continuity

The objective is continuity rather than dependence upon any individual contributor.

Trademarks and Project Identity


As part of its stewardship responsibilities, the ChAoS Foundation is intended to protect the ChAoS MVC name and related trademarks.

Protecting project identity helps users, developers, and organizations distinguish official ChAoS projects and resources from unrelated or potentially misleading uses of those names.

Trademark stewardship is therefore intended to complement the Foundation's responsibility for protecting the continuity and integrity of the projects within its care.

Nonprofit Intent


The ChAoS Foundation is being developed with the intent of becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

The Foundation is presently in development and should not be understood or represented as currently holding federal tax-exempt status.

Organizational structure, governance, policies, and other requirements will be established as Foundation development proceeds.

Current Status


Status: In Development

The ChAoS Foundation has not yet reached its final organizational form.

Its mission and purpose are being established first so that the eventual organization can be built around clearly defined responsibilities rather than allowing its purpose to be determined by organizational structure.

Further information will be published as development of the Foundation progresses.


The ChAoS Foundation

Preserving open source beyond the present.