.... The Linux Foundation and the ASF are both not-for-profit
organizations, but they different significantly in their legal
organizations. I forget the non-project corporation types but
basically, the Linux Foundation is dedicated to free business
development. Projects are controlled through management teams
composed of businesses, usually by paying a fee and getting power
within the project based upon the amount that the business paid
(Silver, Gold, Platinum levels for example).
The ASF is a different kind of not-for-profit organization, it is
dedicated to the people who use the software project, not to
businesses. So for the ASF it is the user community that matters,
not the businesses that use the software. An ASF project is
controlled by individuals in the community that have made significant
contributions to the project. You will often hear ASF people say
"Community over code." (I personally like code more that people, but
that is just me).
Here is the missing details:
Linux Foundation is an IRS 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization and the
Apache Software Foundation is an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization. According to
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1559:
* 501(c)(3): Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific,
Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or
International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty
to Children or Animals Organizations
* 501(c)(6): Business Leagues, Chambers of Commerce, Real Estate
Boards, etc.
Basically community first vs. business first.
One more anecdote then I promise to STFU
As most of you know, Xiaomi sponsored and advocated NuttX to join the
ASF. Xiaomi have been great partners and, despite my leeriness of
businesses, it has been a pleasure working with them.
But a couple of years prior to that, Samsung sponsored NuttX in a
similar way to join the Linux Foundation. After a few weeks of
discussions, I realized that what Samsung was advocating was not in the
interests of the project but served only Samsung and I discontinued that
conversation. One good thing that came from that was a clarification of
my values and what values are necessary to retain in the project in
order for me to relinquish control of it to others. I summarized all of
those things in the top-level INVIOLABLES.md which is essential the
"contract" under which I gave the project away. Most of the items in
that list are things that Samsung wanted to change: They did not want
to follow the standard POSIX/Unix OS interface, they wanted to change
the coding style, they only wanted to support ARM with GCC under Linux,
they wanted to rebrand the project to use a Samsung marketing name, ..
That all makes sense if you understand the fundamental differences
between the Linux Foundation and the ASF.
