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FAQs

What is the OpenJS Foundation?

In 2019, the Node.js Foundation and JS Foundation merged to form the OpenJS Foundation. The OpenJS Foundation is the home of a wide range of JavaScript projects including Appium, Dojo, jQuery, Node.js, webpack, and many more. The merger was the result of extensive reflection and collaboration by both communities and their governing bodies. It reflected a shared desire to simplify and streamline the process for hosting, sustaining and providing financial support to important projects in the JavaScript ecosystem.

What is the goal of the OpenJS Foundation?

The goal of the OpenJS Foundation is to support the healthy growth of the JavaScript and web ecosystem. The OpenJS Foundation is supported by its members, who recognize the interconnected nature of the JavaScript ecosystem and the importance of providing a neutral home for projects which represent significant shared value. In addition to marketing and operational support for hosted projects, the OpenJS Foundation provides a neutral home for community structures such as the Cross Project Council, or CPC. The CPC consists of technical contributors from projects large and small, and provides community governance templates, processes, and mentoring in support of a healthy, diverse, and welcoming project community. The CPC is open to anyone in the community and also includes regular contributors with ongoing responsibilities and project representatives with voting rights.

Why is the OpenJS Foundation needed?

The OpenJS Foundation, like the JS Foundation and Node.js Foundation before it, provides a neutral home for essential open source JavaScript projects. Our goal is to share our learnings around technical governance, project hosting, and running diverse and welcoming communities over a broader section of the ecosystem. In addition, we seek to eliminate operational redundancies between self-hosted projects, making it easier for organizations to support a broad cross-section of the ecosystem through membership, and coordinating efforts with affiliated standards bodies.

Who is participating in the OpenJS Foundation?

The OpenJS Foundation is supported by 26 member companies including Google, IBM, Joyent, and Microsoft.  Membership provides essential financial support for OpenJS Foundation activities, enabling us to provide meaningful support to the projects we host.

Why should developers care?

The combined foundation provides a more effective distribution of financial and marketing resources for the JavaScript community as a whole, benefiting all contributors, member companies, and end users. Examples including organizing community events like Node+JS Interactive, providing marketing and community management support to projects and working groups, and coordinating financial investments across projects. In addition, the combined governance structure enables projects of all sizes to benefit from experienced mentors as they progress through the project lifecycle, and benefit from foundation-wide marketing activity. In the continuing quest to foster a diverse and welcoming community, we are working to ensure projects can make use of a clear and consistent code of conduct and its associated processes.

What projects are in the OpenJS Foundation?

The OpenJS Foundation hosts over 30 projects, including Appium, Dojo, jQuery, Node.js, webpack, and many others.

What is the governance structure of the OpenJS Foundation?

In addition to the board of directors, the OpenJS Foundation provides a neutral home for community structures such as the Cross Project Council, or CPC. The CPC consists of technical contributors from projects large and small, and provides governance templates, processes, and mentoring in support of a healthy, diverse, and welcoming project community. Anyone in the community may attend CPC meetings, and regular attendees may be granted ongoing responsibilities.

While the CPC is a delegate body from the Board of Directors, OpenJS Foundation governance was designed to ensure a clear separation of responsibilities between the two.

In addition, the OpenJS Foundation plans to offer an individual membership program, enabling technical community members and end-users to participate in the non-code governance process.

Are you accepting new projects to the foundation?

Yes! If you have a project that you’re interested in submitting for consideration, check out the full guidelines.

At a high level, projects must be proposed via GitHub, including their preferred maturity level, and be sponsored by two CPC members. Projects will present their proposal at a CPC meeting where feedback will be provided and accepted upon a majority vote if the CPC believes the project is a fit.

Upon approval by the CPC, projects will be assigned one of these three stages:

 

  • Impact Projects have reached their growth goals and are on a sustained cycle of development, maintenance, and long-term support, including large, well-established project communities.
  • Growth Projects are interested in reaching the Impact stage and have set meaningful goals, are actively used in production by 2+ end users, and are an appropriate size/scope.
  • At-Large Projects have the potential to be important to the ecosystem of Impact Projects or the JavaScript ecosystem as a whole and are in need of a neutral home to foster collaborative development.

My organization is interested in becoming a member, how do we join?

We’re excited to hear you’re interested in joining and are ready to welcome you as a member! Learn more and complete the online application, or send us an email at membership@openjsf.org for more information.

Is paid membership required to get involved?

No, any member of the community is welcomed to get involved in our technical communities.

How do I get involved?

Developers are encouraged to contribute to any of our projects including Node.js and our 30 other JavaScript projects.