[Draft] FOSS United 2025 Strategy

Organisation
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This is my interpretation (and a summary of the document).
P.S - I didn’t notice there was a TL,DR in the document already and ended up writing this

  • Explaining our work (and the basic philosophies of FOSS) to both technical and non-technical people has been a challenge so far, and there is more work to be done here.
  • Diversity continues to be a fundamental problem within the FOSS United Community.

Marketing

  • The Foundation, with help from the Community, will create content that improves basic FOSS Literacy(text, videos etc.)
  • FOSS United will continue to devote (some) effort across a broad range of topics for “FOSS Literacy” and start focusing more on promoting “FOSS from India” .
  • The foundation plans to start campaigning for an increase in use and creation of FOSS, specifically within the Government, Industry, Academia (FOSS advocacy)
  • Long term vision - The foundation plans to create meaningful content and advocacy efforts that are hopefully taken over by the community in due course of time.
  • The Foundation will run such efforts on a barebones team of people who are able to work with Volunteers from the Community to get the work done.(Staffing)

Events

  • IndiaFOSS is still not financially sustainable
  • Diversity in terms of attendees,speakers and topics covered remains a challenge.
  • Starting 2025, we are looking to promote and support active members of the Community to lead the events. Specifically, we will look for Co-leads(chairs) who are willing to take overall responsibility for the flagship events.
  • The Foundation staff will still be involved with the events and will work with the Co-leads to make fundamental decisions.
  • We intend to support FOSS conferences from across the country address diversity issues by putting them in touch with members of underrepresented groups wherever possible.

fossunited.org Platform

  • Please see the complete section to understand WHY we need a platform.
  • There will be a focused effort to consolidate the design of the Platform into a cohesive whole and to improve performance.
  • There will be efforts to increase community contributions, this involves improving the documentation and promoting the project so barrier to contribution is reduced.
  • The platform hopes to serve as a way to showcase the work of volunteers/speakers etc. by displaying such information publicly on their user profile.

Financially supporting the Indian FOSS Community

  • Making IndiaFOSS and FOSS Hack into financially sustainable events frees up some of the existing funding for FOSS United, which can be redirected towards the Grants program.
  • The foundation continues to look for more Industry Partners who wish to support the ecosystem.
  • Alternative means of raising or directing funds from the Community need to be considered.
  • The foundation will serve as a means to connect projects who need funding with people who wish to contribute. We do not need to be involved in the finances.

Beyond FOSS

2026 and beyond - Governance

  • 2025 will hopefully be the year when the FOSS United Community elects a Governing Board
  • The Governing Board will ultimately be responsible for outlining the 2026 Strategy for FOSS United, among other things.