Hi everyone, Some more details on NumFocus. When we joined NumFocus, Stefan joined their board. In addition, 5 people represent the Julia project in the NumFocus Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement - Tim Holy, Steve Johnson, John Myles White, Jeff, and myself. This will be the group that manages the Julia project under the NumFocus foundation. Now that I think of it, this information should probably go on julialang.org.
Thus, the governance structure for Julia as an open source project has been formed to a large extent. When we have funds earmarked for Julia at NumFocus, I imagine an executive structure also being put in place, where we may have someone doing project management, fund raising, hiring, etc., and also hire a few full time developers. This requires some non-trivial fundraising to bootstrap, and all ideas are welcome, and any help will be appreciated. The domain name is only the start. There are lots of other community resources - Julialang accounts on Github, Travis-CI, Appveyor, and AWS, the website, the whole JuliaCon, trademarks, logos and licensing terms, etc. Our goal has always been to create an organization that outlives all of us, and that Julia continues to exist and improve for time immemorial. Julia is now reaching a stage where we need to start thinking of the long term - which is why we outlined the three organizations to further the use of Julia in different domains. -viral On Friday, May 15, 2015 at 11:20:39 AM UTC+5:30, Jim Garrison wrote: > > Hi Viral and Stefan, > > Thanks for the replies. > > To be clear, I have no opposition to a third party organization (e.g. > Julia Computing) hosting the web site as an in-kind donation to Julia (the > community project). The GNOME website, for instance, is currently hosted > by Canonical, and it has been hosted by Red Hat in the past. The > gnome.org domain, on the other hand, is owned by the GNOME Foundation, > which is how I believe it should be for a community .org. > > The administrative cost to owning and periodically renewing a domain is > nevertheless nonzero, even though it is less than the cost of hosting > web/email/etc. I agree that it is important to make sure that the > organization tasked with maintaining it is able to do so without things > falling through the cracks, and I'd hope that NumFocus could handle this as > a fiscal sponsor; in fact, they mention hosting as a service they offer at > <http://numfocus.org/foundation/> <http://numfocus.org/foundation/>. > > As Viral mentions, when relying on NumFocus to do more it is important to > make sure they are adequately funded. I will plan to think more about how > we can raise funds for them to do Julia-related things. As a first step, I > just myself joined NumFocus as a Supporting Member, which I had not > realized was possible until now. > > Jim > > On 05/14/2015 07:13 PM, Viral Shah wrote: > > As much as I would like to do so, I also want to have enough funding for > the "Julia foundation" (NumFocus) in place before transferring over > community resources. > > We look at everything closely so that things don't fall through the > cracks. For someone else to do that, we need an organisational structure. > > We are working hard with a couple of folks on funding some people to work > full time for the foundation. I welcome any ideas on raising funds to pay > for a couple of developers and a part time project manager, to start with. > > -viral > On 15 May 2015 5:47 am, "Stefan Karpinski" <ste...@karpinski.org> wrote: > >> Currently I own the domain, but transferring it to NumFocus would be fine >> if they do that (which I can find out). >> >> On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Jim Garrison <j...@garrison.cc> wrote: >> >>> Here is a related question: Who will own and operate the julialang.org >>> domain? Would you be willing to transfer it to NumFocus or a similar >>> nonprofit, community entity? >>> >>> >>> On Monday, May 11, 2015 at 10:55:00 AM UTC-7, Brian Granger wrote: >>>> >>>> Congrats on Julia Computing stuff! We (IPython/Jupyter) are always >>>> thinking about various approaches to making open source sustainable and it >>>> is great to see explorations like this. I wish you the best of success!!! >>>> >>>> I wanted to share some thoughts and questions about trademark as it >>>> relates to open source projects. These thoughts have come out of many >>>> years >>>> of thinking about, and even enforcing, trademarks in the context of >>>> Jupyter/IPython. >>>> >>>> With IPython/Jupyter, the yet-to-be-filed trademarks (there is a bit >>>> of subtlety about the IPython trademark - that is another topic) will >>>> belong to our non-profit sponsor, NumFocus (we will transfer it to them). >>>> Along with that, we will be developing a trademark usage policy that >>>> clarifies to the community how our names and logos can be used. I am >>>> guessing that our policy will be similar to that of other open source >>>> projects like Python: >>>> >>>> https://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/ >>>> >>>> It is likely that we will have a trademark policy that allows >>>> generous usage of the names IPython/Jupyter by the open source community, >>>> but we would not allow companies to use the trademarks in ways that would >>>> confuse users. A company could say "our platform uses the open source >>>> Project Jupyter" but not "our company is called JupyterFoo." IANAL, but it >>>> is my understanding that the bar for trademark confusion is relatively low >>>> and that there is a real danger to not enforcing trademarks, so these >>>> issues are important to understand. >>>> >>>> I think you can see where this is going wrt Julia... >>>> >>>> * Who holds the trademarks on Julia? NumFocus, an individual or Julia >>>> Computing? >>>> * What is the trademark policy of that entity? If it doesn't exist, who >>>> will create it? >>>> * Is Julia Computing infringing upon the Julia trademark? Has the >>>> trademark owner given permission to Julia Compute to use the trademark? >>>> * By using the name "Julia" in the company and open source project, is >>>> the trademark owner creating a precedence of not enforcing the trademark? >>>> * Do you want *other* companies to be allowed to use "Julia" trademarks >>>> in their name? >>>> >>>> I want to be clear - I am all for commercialization efforts around >>>> open source and am very excited about where Julia is headed. I also don't >>>> have any ideas about what the answers to these questions should be for >>>> your >>>> community. >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> >>>> Brian >>>> >>>> >>>> On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 1:20:15 PM UTC-7, Viral Shah wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hello all, >>>>> >>>>> You may have seen today’s Hacker News story about Julia Computing: >>>>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516298 >>>>> >>>>> As you all know, we are committed to Julia being high quality and open >>>>> source. >>>>> >>>>> The existence of Julia Computing was discussed a year ago at JuliaCon >>>>> 2014, though we recognize that not everyone is aware. We set up Julia >>>>> Computing to assist those who asked for help building Julia applications >>>>> and deploying Julia in production. We want Julia to be widely adopted by >>>>> the open source community, for research in academia, and for production >>>>> software in companies. Julia Computing provides support, consulting, and >>>>> training for customers, in order to help them build and deploy Julia >>>>> applications. >>>>> >>>>> We are committed to all the three organizations that focus on >>>>> different users and use cases of Julia: >>>>> >>>>> 1. The open source Julia project is housed at the NumFocus Foundation. >>>>> http://numfocus.org/projects/ >>>>> >>>>> 2. Research on various aspects of Julia is anchored in Alan’s group at >>>>> MIT. http://www-math.mit.edu/~edelman/research.php >>>>> >>>>> 3. Julia Computing works with customers who are building Julia >>>>> applications. http://www.juliacomputing.com/ >>>>> >>>>> Our customers make Julia Computing self-funded. We are grateful that >>>>> they have created full time opportunities for us to follow our passions. >>>>> Open source development will never cease. >>>>> >>>>> You may have questions. Please shoot them here. We will respond back >>>>> with a detailed blog post. >>>>> >>>>> -viral >>>>> >>>>> >> >
