Profile

Organizations supporting the Foundation and its work to leverage Apereo's community services and support.

Foundation Memberships include organizations (academic and research institutions and non-profit foundations) that value open source software within education and the role Apereo plays as a leader and innovator within the sector. Foundation Members need not be specifically involved (e.g., adopters, contributors. developers, users) with Apereo-hosted projects (i.e., Apereo's fiscal sponsorees, e.g., CAS, Sakai, uPortal, etc.), nor any open source software at all.

Participation

General awareness of open source software within higher education.

Through Apereo, Foundation Members participate in the broader open source community (access subject matter expertise, best practices, operational effectiveness, consultation, shared services, etc.), collaborate on topics/projects of shared interests, promote partnerships (reports, surveys), and extend resources (grants, sponsorships, commercial partnerships, volunteers),

Organizational resources to improve and sustain local open source projects.

For Foundation Members leveraging open source software within their organization, e.g., internal installations or infrastructure, local development efforts, external project contributors, etc.

Sector-based

• Community groups: Awareness & Advocacy, Commercial & Corporate Partners, Community Colleges, Executive Leadership, Graduate & Professional Schools, Governance and Administration, HBCUs, Infrastructure & Applications, Libraries, Private Colleges & Universities, Professional Development, Project Management, Public Schools & Systems, Research Computing, Small Schools, Teaching & Learning, Technical Staff & Support Services,
• Conferences and events: All Things Open, Apereo MicroConferences, FOSDEM, FOSSY
• Emerging technology and trends: International regulations, state and national legislation,
• Peer networks: AXIES, EDUCAUSE, ESUP-Portial, Foundations, Open Forum Europe, Open Policy Alliance, Open Source Initiative, OSPO Alliance, OSPO++, SustainOSS
• Policy and Practice: government activity, interpretation, and impact.
• Subject matter expertise: intellectual property (licensing),

Internal

• Adoption ("Procurement")
• Best practices
• Implementation
• Policy development
• Transformation

Examples of Foundation Members

Leslie State University

Leslie State has implemented several open source software applications at both the enterprise and departmental level. These include WordPress to deliver the university and department websites, Moodle in support of a recent campus-wide online educational initiative, the FOLIO library services platform supporting three campus libraries, and CiviCRM to manage alumni and student relations. Several departments have also adopted open source solutions. The Geography Department is using OpenGIS for both teaching and research. The Art and Design Departments now offer students access to an online portfolio through Mahara. Computer Science uses two open source IDEs, Eclipse, and Visual Studio. The Leslie campus data center is running open source locally, including, Ceph, Kubernetes, MySQL, NGINX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and many more, and broadly through several cloud services through Amazon Web Services.

While some faculty, researchers, and even students may be contributing to open source projects, the campus has not initiated a project and does not manage any development communities. Leslie is solely an end-user of open source software; however, open source software is now core to the campus' technical infrastructure, and many academic initiatives rely on continuous availability, high-quality services, and reliable support. As such, Leslie State University joined Apereo as a Foundation Member to complement and extend its understanding of open source software use and maintenance, foster authentic engagement between the campus and the projects it relies on, find peers and colleagues to share best practices, and remain current on developments impacting communities of practice and--more broadly--the sector.