Parties to the Memorandum

1.1. NLnet is (words from Michiel).

1.2. GÉANT is is a membership organisation acting with and for its members to further research and education networking in Europe and globally.

Definitions

Commons Conservancy: A virtual organisation created by NLnet to provide a lightweight approach to software conservancy.

Greenhouse SIG: A GÉANT Special Interest Group established to support Open Source Software projects developed within the GÉANT Community at different points in the project lifecycle.  The terms of the Greenhouse SIG are available on the GÉANT wiki.

Software Advisory Council (SAC): a term used by the Commons Conservancy to describe the group of people with key decision-making responsibility for software projects. 

Software Conservancy: an organisation concerned with with the sustainability and preservation of software projects, typically open source.

Purpose

The Purpose of the MoU is to define a mechanism for GÉANT, through its Greenhouse Special Interest Group (SIG), and NLnet, through the Commons Conservancy, to work together to support Open Source Software (OSS) teams from the community in building sustainable models for projects.

Terms

As part of this understanding, NLnet will:

• Provide access to the Commons Conservancy to projects from the GÉANT Community under the terms defined in the Commons Conservancy Plan, appended as Annex 1 to this document.
• Participate in the Greenhouse SIG as appropriate to provide help and advice to projects participating in the SIG.

As part of this understanding GÉANT will:

• Support and help projects participating in the Greenhouse SIG to reach an appropriate level of maturity to use the Commons Conservancy.

• Explain and promote the Commons Conservancy to the GÉANT constituency, invite suitably mature and relevant projects from the constituency to participate in the Greenhouse SIG and triage those participating in the SIG from time to time to determine whether they're fit for on-boarding into the Greenhouse.

• Support projects to develop the SAC and other processes needed for projects to operate within the Conservancy.

Both parties agree that:

• This memorandum does not guarantee that any projects will make use of the Commons Conservancy and there is no obligation for projects participating in the Greenhouse SIG to use the Conservancy.
• The Commons Conservancy and the Greenhouse SIG operate as individual and independent initiatives from each other.
• Both organisations will work together on external communications regarding the Greenhouse SIG and the Commons Conservancy and permit the use of relevant logos and trademarks of both organisations to be used for external communications by agreement.

General

• This memorandum does not and is not intended to create binding or legal obligations on the Parties.
• Nothing in this proposal is intended to create, or be deemed to create, a partnership, or the relation of employer and employee between parties.
• This proposal will not hinder the collaboration which already exists or will be established in the future by either party with a third party (subject to the agreed terms of copyright already stated).
• This Memorandum of Understanding will remain in effect until [date]. Either parties can terminate the Memorandum of Understanding by means of ninety (90) days written notice to the other party. Its implementation will be reviewed annually.
• This Memorandum of Understanding may be amended by either parties with written consent from the other party to the memorandum.

Contacts

The following contacts represent the day-to-day contacts for this Memorandum of Understanding in both organisations.

For GÉANT: Nicole Harris, GÉANT, 468D Singel, Amsterdam 1017 AW. nicole.harris@geant.org.

For NLnet: (Details from Michiel).

Signatures

Annex 1

The Commons Conservancy.