As many of you know by now, the Squid Project has formed the Squid Software Foundation, a non-profit organization to support Squid developer and user communities. The Foundation aims to provide community governance and representation; logistical and administrative assistance; infrastructure resources; as well as copyright ownership and licensing authority for the Squid Project.
http://www.squid-cache.org/Foundation/
The Foundation has been recognized by US government as a 501(c)3 public charity. This recognition is meant to assure the public of our not-for-profit status, exempt Foundation from paying most taxes, and to make qualified donations to the Foundation tax-deductible. This designation is a big deal, and it took a lot of effort to get this status. A big “Thank You” to those who made it possible!
The Foundation structure has been modeled after the FreeBSD Foundation, with various bits and pieces borrowed from the Apache Foundation and other well-run open source non-profits. You can find our bylaws and other documents at
http://www.squid-cache.org/Foundation/archive/
The Foundation is currently being run by three volunteers: Henrik Nordström, Amos Jeffries, and Alex Rousskov. There is a lot more work than the three of us can handle, and there are plans to expand the Board of Directors to at least four directors this year. Watch this space for further announcements on the subject.
While the Foundation is not going to participate in Squid development, there are plenty of infrastructure and community activities where we can help both Squid developers and administrators. The scope of possible projects ranges from release maintenance, to paid services coordination, to build farm administration, to automated regression testing, to experimental live deployments. With sufficient funding, we may even be able to organize developer meetups and user workshops.
The Foundation is funded by donations. The startup capital was provided by your PayPal payments that the Squid Project informally accumulated since 2007 and a Measurement Factory contribution. We will need a lot more funds to fulfill the Foundation mission though :-). Donations are now gratefully accepted at
http://www.squid-cache.org/Foundation/donate.html
If you have questions about the Foundation, please email them to
Thank you,
The Squid Software Foundation Board of Directors
Henrik Nordström,
Amos Jeffries,
Alex Rousskov.
The Squid Web Proxy/Cache Blog 