Apereo Foundation

The Apereo Foundation, established in 2012, is a global non-profit organization that supports and sustains open source software associated with postsecondary (higher education) institutions. The Foundation's mission is to assist academia in developing, adopting, and maintaining open source software for teaching, learning, scholarship and research as well as leveraging OSS throughout IT infrastructure and user-facing systems. Apereo fosters a community-driven approach, where institutions collaborate to co-create code, share best practices, and collectively shape the direction of projects.

On a more operational level, Apereo provides the infrastructure (GitHub, JIRA, community lists, etc.) our OSS projects need to produce software and drive innovation as well as acting as a fiscal sponsor. We also provide a broad range of sustainability services, starting with our formal incubation process (modeled from Apache) that all projects must complete, to legal, accounting, communications and fundraising services. We also maintain a vibrant commercial affiliate program for companies that support and contribute to Apereo OSS projects.

While Apereo is primarily focused on maintaining and sustaining its current projects, we are also aware of the long history of postsecondary education institutions being the birthplace of major OSS projects, including Apache Web Server, Linux, R and Python. As a result, Apereo also promotes the use of OSS and teaching of OSS principles within course work, including concepts of open work and community collaboration that powers OSS development. We believe that ensuring students graduate with knowledge of OSS tools and the “soft skills” needed to effectively engage in OSS communities is important for both the sustainability of today’s OSS as well as future OSS innovation.