...
Fedora Commons was incorporated in May 2007 and startup funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was granted in July 2007. Since that time, all business functions have been created and the new organization has been staffed. Fedora Commons has been granted federal and New York status 501(c)3 status. The Fedora software was developed as a joint project of Cornell University and the University of Virginia funded by the Mellon Foundation starting in 2001. The architecture resulted from the pioneering work of Sandy Payette and Carl Lagoze later joined by Thornton Staples and Rosser Wayland. With over ten releases of the software and having developed world-wide adoption, the need to create an organization to foster and develop the Fedora and its related technologies resulted in the formation of Fedora Commons.
This document provides a roadmap for the development of Fedora Commons' technologies. It is the first such document published and the beginning of a community process for governing technology development in Fedora Commons. The roadmap summarizes the strategic vision of Fedora Commons that guides development, documents the themes and priorities of our community summarizing the needs we will address and provides a plan for the software releases we hope will enable those who adopt our technology.
...
We believe that a holistic approach to understanding the needs of our community and providing a sustainable open community, combined with open standards and open source software, is likely to provide the best platform for long term viability of the world's information and immediate utility for its use. This does not necessarily mean open access to all information since the rights of organizations, institutions and individuals must be respected. However, there must be no proprietary technological barrier that prevents accomplishing our mission and the missions of our community. Additionally, content owners must not be expected to yield their rights simply to use software or practices we provide. While we are a non-profit corporation, however, we believe that constructive engagement with profit making organizations is necessary to reach our goals.
Many of the organizations that Fedora Commons serves have substantial overlap in their requirements for content-related solutions. This provides us with an opportunity to develop technology that satisfies common needs reducing the cost and time it takes to develop content-related information systems. We have also found that many of these organizations have unique elements to their needs or already have investments in applications or infrastructures that they must continue to use. Recent trends in software development architectures and technologies make it practical to create semi-customized solutions from re-useable components and services. Fedora Commons has selected two of the most effective trends to guide development of its technologies: Service Oriented architectures (SOA) and the Web architecture. In addition, Fedora Commons will incorporate semantic technologies and model-driven architectures as these trends become practical. Organizations or solution developers can integrate Fedora Commons-supplied components in different ways, combined with their own locally-developed components and legacy systems, into solutions that meet their unique and individual requirements.
While the approaches described above are more often associated with larger systems, we must also ensure that the barrier to entry is low so that organizations with limited resources are served. One approach we expect to use is pre-integrated solution bundles that provide reasonable utility without substantial development. Solution bundles may be used as-is or be customized within the capabilities of the organization.
It is interesting when a natural synergy forms between the needs of a community and emerging technology.
...