The mission of Graph Foundation, a not for profit corporation, is to further, at no charge, the Open Source development and distribution of graph technology in the areas of software, storage, networking, clustering, parallel and distributed computation, query processing, analytics, visualization, machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud accessibility, while serving the community with mentoring, leadership and vision for a healthy graph ecosystem.

WHAT IS THE GRAPH FOUNDATION?

Established in 2018, The Graph Foundation is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors. Our all-volunteer board oversees leading graph Open Source projects, including ONgDB — the world’s most popular graph database.

The Graph Foundation provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits potential legal exposure for our project committers. Through The Graph Foundation’s meritocratic process, individual Members and Committers can successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting users worldwide through software solutions distributed under Open Source Licenses; and the community actively participates in mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, conferences and user trainings.

HOW WILL THE GRAPH FOUNDATION GROW?

The Graph Foundation was incorporated in 2018 as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order to ensure that Graph Foundation projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers. Individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software development, through sustained participation and contributions within the Foundation’s projects, are eligible for membership in The Graph Foundation. An individual is awarded membership after nomination and approval by a majority of the existing Graph Foundation members. Thus, The Graph Foundation is governed by the community it most directly serves — the people collaborating within its projects.

HOW ARE GRAPH FOUNDATION PROJECTS GOVERNED?

The Graph Foundation members periodically elect a Board of Directors to manage the organizational affairs of the Foundation, as accorded by The Graph Foundation Bylaws. The Board, in turn, appoints a number of officers to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Foundation. A number of public records of our operation are made available to the community. A more detailed explanation of How The Graph Foundation works in terms of day to day operations is available, and the Community Development projects are planned to help newcomers learn more about The Graph Foundation.

Individual Graph Foundation projects are in turn governed directly by Project Management Committees (PMC) made up of individuals who have shown merit and leadership within those projects. There are detailed descriptions of Graph Foundation and project governance models.

WHO RUNS THE GRAPH FOUNDATION?

The membership of The Graph Foundation elects the board to run the Foundation and to set and ensure policy. The directors of the board are:

The Board has appointed the following corporate officers of The Graph Foundation:

The Graph Foundation is a collaborative effort of our Members. Our goal is to build and sustain the literal foundation upon which our open-source software projects are based.