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Start a Project

A Project is the collaboration formed under the Joint Development Foundation or its Joint Development Foundation Projects, LLC subsidiary. Each Project has its own independent governance, identity, and scope of work.

What can a JDF Project do?

Projects operating under the Joint Development Foundation’s legal umbrella enjoy numerous benefits, including existing legal agreements, choice of intellectual property policies, non-profit status, and corporate structure. This allows projects to establish themselves more quickly and easily, collect funds, issue press releases, develop liaison relationships, and hold copyrights, all without the need for custom agreements and new corporate organizations.

Projects can: 

  • Use JDF’s template agreements and policies for exclusion notices, MoUs, operational procedures, and more.
  • Establish one or more technical Working Groups or committees to advance work.
  • Choose from multiple intellectual property policy licensing options that support co-development of source code, standards, data and other deliverables.
  • Invite members and partners from all over the world to join the effort, and advance work to other SDOs for even more consensus building.
  • Optionally raise funds for ecosystem-building activities, such as marketing, events, development, certification and training.
  • Access a team of legal and operational experts in the field of standardization and open source who can help answer questions or connect the project  to the broader JDF network.

Forming Your Project

Step 1

Tell us what you have in mind – email our formation team or fill out the form on this page.

Step 2

If it’s a good fit, we’ll create the legal entity for your Project and walk you through different options. Check out our FAQ to learn what makes a great match.

Step 3

We’ll help you and your partners customize the template Agreement package, which includes the Project Charter, Working Group Charter(s), and optional Funding Agreement.

Step 4

You can now start creating and sharing deliverables and inviting new participants to join your Project. Time to get to work!

Need More Info?

Please read our FAQ for more information or contact us with questions.