The following are notable organizations devoted to the advocacy, legal aid, financial aid, technical aid, governance, etc. of free and open-source software (FOSS) as a whole, or of one or more specific FOSS projects. For projects that have their own foundation or are part of an umbrella organization, the primary goal is often to provide a mechanism for funding development of the software.
For the most part, these organizations are structured as nonprofit/charity organizations.
This list does not include companies that aim to make money from free and open-source software.
Umbrella organizations
The following organizations host, and provide other services, for a variety of different open-source projects:
- Apache Software Foundation (ASF) – founded in 1999 with headquarters in Wakefield, MA, USA; manages the development of over 350 Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server.[1]
- Eclipse Foundation – founded in 2004 with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium; supports the development of over 350 Eclipse projects, including the Eclipse IDE.
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) – founded in 1985 with headquarters in Boston, MA, USA; supports the free software movement, which promotes the universal freedom to study, distribute, create, and modify computer software
- GNOME Foundation – founded in 2000 with headquarters in Orinda, CA, USA; coordinates the efforts of the GNOME Project, including GNOME
- KDE e.V. – founded in 1997 with headquarters in Berlin, Germany; coordinates the efforts of KDE Projects including KDE
- Linux Foundation (LF) – founded in 2000 with headquarters in San Francisco, CA, USA; supports the development of the Linux kernel, as well as over 60 other projects, only some of which are connected to Linux. Also does advocacy, training and standards.
- OASIS Open - founded in 1993; provides communities with foundation-level support, IP and license management, governance, and outreach with an optional path for work to be recognized by de jure standards organizations and referenced in public procurement.
- OpenInfra Foundation – founded in 2012 with headquarters in Austin, TX; focused on the development and support of open source infrastructure projects, including OpenStack. Previously known as the OpenStack Foundation.
- OW2 – founded in 2007 with headquarters in Paris, France; focused on infrastructure for enterprise middleware
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) – founded in 1998 with headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, USA; steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software
- Sahana Software Foundation – founded in 2009 with headquarters in Los Angeles, CA, USA; for humanitarian-related software
- Software Freedom Conservancy – founded in 2006 with headquarters in New York, NY, USA; hosts around 40 projects.
- Software in the Public Interest (SPI) – founded in 1997 with headquarters in New York, NY, USA; originally only for the Debian project, it now hosts around 35 projects, some of which are umbrella projects themselves.
- VideoLAN – founded in 2009 with headquarters in Paris, France; multimedia-related projects
Domain-specific organizations
The following organizations host open-source projects that relate to a specific technical area.
Project-specific organizations
A large number of single-project organizations (often called "foundations") exist; in most cases, their primary purpose is to provide a mechanism to bring funds from the software's users, including both individuals and companies, to its developers.
