<p>The following are various questions that we typically get from project

  leaders that wish to apply to Conservancy.</p>

<h2>I sent in my inquiry letter and/or application a long time ago.  Why haven't you replied?</h2>

<p>Conservancy receives an overwhelming level of interest and we have very few

  <a href="/about/staff/">staff positions</a> to

  meet the interest and demand

  for <a href="/members/services/">Conservancy's

  services</a> to its member projects.  Meanwhile, Conservancy always

  prioritizes needs of

  its <a href="/members/current/">existing member

  projects</a> over new inquiries and applications.  Therefore, it

  sometimes can take quite a while to finish the application process and

  be offered membership, but please note that such delays mean that should

  your project ultimately become a member project, your project will then

  be a beneficiary of this policy.</p>

<h2>What are the key criteria our project must meet to join?</h2>

<p>In order to join, projects need to meet certain criteria.  A rough

  outline of those criteria are as follows:</p>

<ul><li>The project must be a software development or documentation

    project.  Non-software projects to advance the cause of software

    freedom, while important and useful, are beyond the scope of

    Conservancy.</li>

    <li>The project must be exclusively devoted to the development and

    documentation of FLOSS.  The project's goals must be consistent with

    Conservancy's tax-exempt purposes, and other requirements imposed

    on Conservancy by the IRS' 501(c)(3) rules.  Namely, the goal of the

    project must to develop and document the software in a not-for-profit

    way to advance the public good, and must develop the software in

    public.</li>

    <li>The project must be licensed in a way fitting with software

      freedom principles.  Specifically, all software of the project

      should be licensed under a license that is listed both as

      a <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html">Free

      Software license by the Free Software Foundation</a> and as

      an <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical">Open

      Source license by the Open Source Initiative</a>.  All software

      documentation for the project should be licensed under a license on

      the preceding lists, or under Creative

      Commons' <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC-By-SA</a>

      or <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-By</a>

      or

        <a href="https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/">CC-0</a>.</li>

   <li>The project should have an existing, vibrant, diverse community

      that develops and documents the software.  For example, projects

      that have been under development for less than a year or only a

      “proof of concept” implementation are generally not

      eligible.</li>

</ul>

<p>While any project meeting the criteria above can apply, meeting these

  criteria doesn't guarantee acceptance of your project.  Conservancy

  favors projects that are well-established and have some track record of

  substantial contributions from a community of volunteer developers.

  Furthermore, Conservancy does give higher priority to projects that

  have an established userbase and interest, but also tries to accept some

  smaller projects with strong potential.</p>

<h2>Is our project required to accept membership if offered?</h2>

<p>Not at all.  Many projects apply and subsequently decide not to join a

  non-profit, or decide to join a different non-profit entity.  Don't

  worry about “wasting our time” if your project's developers

  aren't completely sure yet if they want to join Conservancy.  If

  membership in Conservancy is currently a legitimate consideration for

  your project, we encourage you to apply.  We'd rather that you apply and

  turn down an offer for membership than fail to apply and have to wait

  until the next application round when you're sure.</p>

<h2>What benefits does our project get from joining?</h2>

<p>We maintain a <a href="/members/services">detailed list of services

    that Conservancy provides to member projects</a>.  If you have

OpenTripPlanner is the leading open source platform for multimodal trip

itinerary planning and network analysis.  Launched in 2009, OpenTripPlanner

has since attracted a thriving community of users and developers, with live

deployments now found in twelve countries.  OpenTripPlanner provides a

multimodal trip planner allowing users to plan trips using a variety of

transportation modes. Additionally, OpenTripPlanner has features for

transportation analysis, including measures of mobility and accessibility.</p>

<h2><a href="http://phpmyadmin.net/">phpMyAdmin</a></h2>

<p>

phpMyAdmin is a free and open source web interface for the MySQL,

MariaDB and Drizzle database systems. Frequently used operations

(managing databases, tables, columns, relations, indexes, users,

permissions, etc) can be performed via the user interface, while you

still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement.</p>

<p>Since its first release in September 1998, phpMyAdmin has been adopted

by many web host providers, and has translations underway for more than

seventy languages.</p>

<h2><a href="http://pypy.org/">PyPy</a></h2>

<ul>

<li>a common translation and support framework for producing

implementations of dynamic languages, emphasising a clean

separation between language specification and implementation

aspects.</li>

<li>a compliant, flexible and fast implementation of the Python Language

using the above framework to enable new advanced features without having

to encode low level details into it.</li></ul>

<h2><a href="http://us1.samba.org/samba/">Samba</a></h2>

<p>Samba is a FOSS suite that provides seamless file and print

services to SMB/CIFS clients, namely, to Microsoft Windows. Samba is

freely available, unlike other SMB/CIFS implementations, and allows

for interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based

clients.  Samba is software that can be run on a platform other than

Microsoft Windows. For example, Samba runs on Unix, GNU/Linux, IBM

System z, Solaris, Mac OS X, and OpenVMS, among others. It is

standard on virtually all distributions of GNU/Linux and is commonly

included as a basic system service on other UNIX-based systems as

well. Samba uses the TCP/IP protocol that is installed on the host

server.</p>

<p>One of the key goals of the project is to remove barriers to

interoperability. Samba is a software package that gives network

administrators flexibility and freedom in setup, configuration, choice

of systems, and equipment. Samba is released under the GPL.</p>

<h2><a href="http://seleniumhq.org">Selenium</a></h2>

<p>Selenium is a suite of tools for browser automation. It is composed of

“IDE”, a recording and playback mechanism,

  on what they do best: improving the software for the public good.  The

  following are the services and options that are available to FLOSS

  projects that have joined Conservancy as a member project.</p>

<h2>Tax-Deductible, Earmarked Donations</h2>

<p>Member projects can receive earmarked donations through Conservancy.

   Since Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) charity incorporated in New York,

   donors can often deduct the donation on their USA taxes.  Additionally,

   the donors can indicate that their donation should be used to advance a

   specific member project, and those funds are kept in a separate account

   for the member project by Conservancy.  This structure prevents

   developers from having to commingle project funds with their own

   personal accounts or having to set up their own project specific

   account.</p>

   <p>Since Conservancy is a tax-exempt organization, there are some

   limits that the law places on what member projects can do with their

   assets, but those limits are the same as if the project was an

   independent non-profit entity.  Usually, the project leadership

   instructs Conservancy's leadership on how the project's funds are spent.

   Conservancy spends these funds on the project's behalf on any expenses

   that constitute appropriate activity under Conservancy's 501(c)(3)

   not-for-profit mission.  Some typical uses of earmarked donations by

<ul>

<li>funding travel expenses for project developers to attend relevant

  conferences.</li> 

<li>domain name fees, bandwidth costs, and computer equipment

  purchases.</li>

<li>purchasing media for distribution of project software at conferences

  and events.</li>

<li>paying key developers on a contractual basis to improve the project's

  software and its documentation.</li>

<li>sponsoring and organizing conferences for the project.</li>

<li>trademark registration and enforcement.</li>

<li>FLOSS license enforcement and compliance activity.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Asset Stewardship</h2>

<p>Conservancy can hold any assets for the project on its behalf.  This

  includes copyrights, trademarks, domain names, physical computer

  equipment or anything that should be officially held in the name of the

  project.  Member projects are not required that Conservancy hold all

  assets of a project. (For example, member projects are

  not <em>required</em> to assign copyrights to Conservancy.)

  However, Conservancy can accommodate the needs of projects that want

  their assets under the control of a not-for-profit entity and exercised

  only for the public good.</p>

<h2>Contract Negotiation and Execution</h2>

<p>Projects sometimes need to negotiate and execute a contract with a

  company.  For example, when a project wants to organize and run a

  conference, the venue usually has a complicated contract for rental of

  the space and services.  Conservancy assists projects in the negotiation

  of such contracts, and can sign them on behalf of the project.</p>

<h2>Conference Logistical Support</h2>

<p>Many Conservancy projects have an annual conference.  Conservancy

  provides logistical support for these conferences, particularly in the