Conservancy Announces Partnership with the Digital Impact Alliance

Conservancy Announces Partnership with the Digital Impact Alliance

October 23, 2017

Software Freedom Conservancy is honored to partner with the
Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) to provide
services in support of its new Open Source
Center
. DIAL, an initiative of the United
Nations Foundation
, is supported by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation
, the US Agency for
International Development (USAID)
, and the Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (Sida)
. The Center will provide resources to free and open source
software projects serving international development and humanitarian response.

Conservancy is positioned to help participating projects deal with a variety of challenges
including basic asset stewardship services and trademark management. Software
projects participating in the DIAL Open Source Center will have priority access to
Conservancy’s comprehensive fiscal sponsorship services, enabling them to offload
the complex management issues that a standalone foundation would involve.

“The DIAL Open Source Center is founded upon the belief that the techniques
evolved by the free & open source software movement are the best ways to create
inclusive, collaboratively-designed software,” said Michael Downey, the Center’s
Director of Community. “That movement is built around the idea of leveraging excellent work by others, so we’re pleased to be partnering with Software Freedom
Conservancy to connect their industry-leading services to our participating projects.”

“Conservancy is committed to supporting software development communities
who create ethical technology for the public’s benefit,” said Karen
Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive Director. “Our team is strongly aligned
with DIAL’s mission to build more mature technology products and communities
to support international development. We are eager to increase the impact
of those projects by connecting them with our expertise and services.”

The Center will also provide participating projects with ongoing funding opportunities.
Over the next few weeks, it is currently offering a first round of catalytic grants to projects
serving international development and humanitarian response that foster a healthy, sustainable free and open source software community. The program website is now active in beta mode at http://www.osc.dial.community/ and is soliciting potential members to join and help shape the program.