Clojurists Together Foundation Launches!

[Deb Nicholson]

Conservancy Sunsets Charitable Donations for Clojurists Together Grants
URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/may/18/ClojuristsSunset/

Clojurists Together, in conjunction with Software Freedom Conservancy,
announces today the formation of the [Clojurists Together Foundation](
https://www.clojuriststogether.org), a new trade organization,
dedicated to funding and supporting open source software,
infrastructure, and documentation that is important to the Clojure and
ClojureScript community. For the past four years, Conservancy, a
charitable 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, managed Clojars'
development grant program, known as "Clojurists Together" has been
managed by Conservancy, a charitable 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
The Clojurists Together  program, under Conservancy's auspices, funded
creation of free and open source software, infrastructure, and
documentation that the Clojure/ClojureScript community relies on,
licensed freely for use, modification, and redistribution by the
general public.

Clojars [joined Conservancy](
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2017/feb/23/clojars-announcement) in
February 2017.  Conservancy helped Clojars create and 
manage the Clojurists Together grant program. Since late 2017, the
program has funded critical Clojars and Clojure development including
code, infrastructure files and documentation. Conservancy funded
critical projects such as Bruce Hauman's Figwheel tool, an updated API
and other features for clj-http, a widely used base HTTP client. All 
told, Conservancy managed over $200,00 for this program, and gave
grants and contractor payments of over $150,000 for code development on
Clojars and Clojure. Conservancy and Clojars transparently published
[contemporaneous (
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/jun/26/highlightsJune2018/)
[highlights](
https://www.clojuriststogether.org/news/february-2019-monthly-update/)
of that [work](
https://www.clojuriststogether.org/news/august-2019-monthly-update/).

We have all been excited and proud of this excellent work for the last
four years. After much collaborative discussion between Conservancy and
Clojars, we have agreed that the newer initiatives and upcoming plans
for Clojars belong in a new independent trade association which
provides ways for for-profit companies to join together to fund and
influence important open source work and also have direct control over
their assets and operations to accomplish this work with their own
timescale and procedures. We have thus encouraged and advised the
Clojars community as they created the [Clojurists Together Foundation](
https://www.clojuriststogether.org/).

Conservancy will spend remaining charitably donated funds eamarked for
Clojars in ways that benefit the charitable mission of
Conservancy within the Clojure and ClojureScript community. However,
Conservancy will no longer accept donations earmarked for Clojars
starting on Monday June 1, 2020. Conservancy will automatically
terminate automated donation accounts and refund any Clojars donations
that arrive after that date.

Finally, we would like to specifically thank Daniel Compton for his
tireless work and dedication to FOSS that he has shown throughout this
process. Daniel worked as a volunteer to build the Clojurists Together
program with Conservancy to help advance software freedom in his
community and his commitment to that truly embodies the mission
of advancing software freedom for the public that Conservancy pursues.



-- 
Deb Nicholson <deb at sfconservancy.org>
Software Freedom Conservancy