Open Source Organizations that Google Supports

Google is proud to support a wide variety of technical and advocacy organizations including:

• The Apache Software Foundation

  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is made up of nearly 100 top level projects that cover a wide range of technologies. We consider ourselves not simply a group of projects sharing a server, but rather a community of developers and users. The ASF provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects.

• The C++ Standards Committee

  ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG21 has produced the standard ISO/IEC 14882:2003 on the programming language C++. The Working Group meets two to three times per year - in joint technical sessions with US committee J16. A number of countries have been represented at the meetings: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the USA.

• The Eclipse Foundation

  Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services.

• Freenet

  Freenet is free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Freenet is decentralized to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if used in "darknet" mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect.

• The Free Software Foundation

  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users. The FSF is working to secure freedom for computer users by promoting the development and use of free (as in freedom) software and documentation — particularly the GNU operating system — and by campaigning against threats to computer user freedom like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and software patents.

• Free Software Foundation Europe

  Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) maintains that the freedoms to use, study, share and improve software are critical to ensure equal participation in the information age. We work to create general understanding and support for software freedom in politics, law and society-at-large.

• The GNOME Foundation

  The GNOME Project is an effort to create a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application development framework for software developers.

• KDE

  The KDE Community is an international technology team dedicated to creating a free and user-friendly computing experience, offering an advanced graphical desktop, a wide variety of applications for communication, work, education and entertainment and a platform to easily build new applications upon.

• Kernel.org

  Kernel.org is the primary site for the Linux kernel source, but it has much more than just Linux kernels. The Linux kernel is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), and is developed by contributors worldwide.

• The Linux Foundation

  The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, it sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading technology companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and advances Linux by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community to ensure Linux remains free and technically advanced.

• The MetaBrainz Foundation

  The MetaBrainz Foundation operates the MusicBrainz project. MusicBrainz is a user maintained community music metadatabase. Music metadata is information such as the name of an artist, the name of an album and list of tracks that appear on an album. MusicBrainz collects this information about music and makes it available to the public.

• The Mozilla Foundation

  The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet. Established in July, 2003, with start-up funds from the Netscape division of AOL, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project. The Foundation has been incorporated as a California not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Mozilla project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and funds and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source software projects.

• The NetBSD Project

  NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license.

• OASIS

  OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization, along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets.

• The OpenBSD Project

  The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system emphasizing portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography.

• Open Invention Network

  Open Invention Network is an intellectual property company that was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment. It is refining the intellectual property model so that important patents are openly shared in a collaborative environment. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. This enables companies to make significant corporate and capital expenditure investments in Linux — helping to fuel economic growth.

• OSUOSL

  The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally.

• Python Software Foundation

  The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is a non-profit membership organization devoted to advancing open source technology related to the Python programming language. It qualifies under the US Internal Revenue Code as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) scientific and educational public charity, and conducts its business according to the rules for such organizations.

• Samba

  Since 1992, Samba has provided secure, stable and fast file and print services for all clients using the SMB/CIFS protocol, such as all versions of DOS and Windows, OS/2, Linux and many others. Samba is an important component to seamlessly integrate Linux/Unix Servers and Desktops into Active Directory environments using the winbind daemon.

• The Tor Project

  The Tor Project maintains a growing set of software and services in order to make your experience safer, better, and more anonymous. Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.