Contributions
Budget
Transparent and open finances.
About
The Haskell Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to broadening the adoption of Haskell, by supporting its ecosystem of tools, libraries, education, and research.
Why do we need yet another Haskell community organisation? The HF will address the following needs, which are currently under-served:
Why do we need yet another Haskell community organisation? The HF will address the following needs, which are currently under-served:
- Driving adoption. HF seeks to foster an understanding of the benefits of using Haskell among developers who do not currently use the language, to erase barriers to entry, and to improve the Haskell ecosystem. We have many passionate and expert groups, but each is focused around a particular piece of the ecosystem, and none is dedicated to the overall user experience.
- Technical infrastructure and glue. The HF will identify and integrate or implement missing “technical glue”: the useful stuff that makes for a smooth user experience (pain-free installers, documentation, error messages, and much more).
- Community glue. Our individual groups function well, but we lack mechanisms for high-quality technical communication between them. The HF will try to nurture respectful, inclusive communication across the community.
- Resources and funding. We have plenty of volunteer groups, but as Haskell becomes more widely adopted, and more mission critical to more organisations it becomes harder for volunteers to sustain all the necessary infrastructure. We need colleagues whose day job is to make everything work...and that needs funding. Because of its broad scope, the Foundation will be a more credible recipient of corporate funding than any of our individual groups are today.
Principles and Ethos
How we pursue the goals of HF is just as important as what the goals are. HF’s actions will be guided by these core principles:
- Open source. Haskell is an open source community and HF will embrace the open-source ethos wholeheartedly. HF may develop, or sponsor the development of tools and infrastructure, but it will all be open source.
- Empowering the community. A major goal of HF is to augment, celebrate, and coordinate the contributions and leadership of volunteers, not to supplant or replace them.
- Open, friendly, and diverse. For many of us Haskell is more a way of life than a programming language. All are welcome, all can contribute.
- Transparent. All communication related to code and decision making will be publicly accessible, to enable asynchronous communication and collaboration. Only certain categories of sensitive information (e.g. financial, and matters concerning particular individuals) will be kept confidential.
- True to Haskell’s principles. Haskell’s design puts principle ahead of expediency, notably by cleaving closely to the principles of purely functional programming. Success, yes, but not at all costs!