• Start date
• Initial members
• Resources needed by group
• Deliverable that will be created
• Description of how that deliverable satisfies a part of OSI's mission
• Target completion date

Start date

Snowdrift.coop started in any sense in fall 2012 and formally incorporated on the state level in August 2013. Full operations as planned have not started yet. We hope to get fiscal sponsorship with OSI to support our continued work as soon as possible (Ideally September 2015).

Initial members

Working Group Chair:

Working Group Sponsor:

OSI General Manager:

Other Contributors:

Aaron Wolf, co-founder

David Thomas, co-founder

Bryan Richter, lead developer

Robert Martinez, lead designer

(dozens of other volunteers around the world, and other formal members of the Snowdrift.coop team and steering committee)

Resources needed by group

501(c)(3) sponsorship to facilitate grants and other large donations. We could also use assistance with studying legal and accounting questions.

Specifically at this time, one of the co-founders is contributing substantial funds, and the tax credit from (c)(3) would translate into more funds for the project. Note: We may or may not want or need fiscal sponsorship long-term, but this proposal is specifically for sponsoring our research/prototype phase in which we primarily create public Open Source resources. During this stage, we will determine more about our prospects and best situation for potential independent 501 status.

Deliverable that will be created

Snowdrift.coop is prototyping a new form of cooperative community sponsorship / long-term patronage for Open Source projects. While we hope long-term to operate as a full foundation handling donations between large numbers of donors and projects, this proposal is to support the prototyping stage. At this stage, we are focused on creating, presenting, and studying the concept of a network-driven many-to-many matching pledge as a mechanism to improve overall support for Open Source.

We already have a prototype web platform in progress with substantial research and writings, but the design and presentation of the full pledging mechanism is still incomplete. Our goal for this stage is to have a fully-working, clear, testable platform, a project sign-up process, and continued community building to have a solid prototype. The prototype will serve both as a valuable reference and test bed for ideas around community-support for Open Source and as a foundation for then running our actual fundraising cooperative.

Description of how that deliverable satisfies a part of OSI's mission

Snowdrift.coop is about the studying and practical testing of ideas around creating a sustainable economy for Open Source, especially for the sorts of end-user products. Thus, we aim to help promote Open Source development downstream as it is currently most strong in developer-focused upstream projects.

Target completion date

We hope to complete the prototype as quickly as we can and have a fully working system with all writings, research, and policies in place by sometime in 2016, if not sooner. Our community is steadily growing, but the scope is ambitious, so setting precise dates has been difficult.