OSAF receives $2.75 million in grants

September 2003

We are very pleased to announce that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the 25 university members of the Common Solutions Group (CSG) have agreed to provide OSAF a total of $2.75 million in grants. These funds will allow OSAF to extend the functionality of the Chandler software application to meet the information technology needs of higher education.

“I am thrilled with the financial support from the Mellon Foundation and the CSG universities.” said Mitchell Kapor, Chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF). “These generous contributions from both public and private institutions represent a new funding model for open source software development and provide a significant contribution toward ensuring sustainability of a non-profit open source endeavor like OSAF. With these grants, OSAF will now have the resources to extend Chandler to meet the requirements of higher education.”

Chandler is taking a fresh view of calendar, email, contacts, and instant messaging functionality, and will feature sophisticated information sharing based on easy, server-optional networking. Inspired by expressions of significant interest from the higher education community, OSAF began working with the members of the CSG to determine how to address their desire for open source standards-based calendaring solutions, as well as interoperability, scalability and security requirements.

The Mellon Foundation initially provided a $98,000 grant in March 2003 to investigate whether Chandler could be extended to meet higher education needs. That study determined the additional requirements for implementing a higher education version of Chandler. The current grants -- $1.5 million from the Mellon Foundation and $1.25 million from the 25 university members of the CSG – which supplement OSAF’s initial funding of $5 million, will enable OSAF to complete the development of this additional functionality for Chandler by the end of 2005.

One of the Universities that OSAF has been working with is the University of Washington. Oren Sreebny, Assistant Director of Computing & Communications, is excited about the prospects of an open source shared personal information manager tailored for higher education use. “Having a freely distributable, open source PIM that will support relevant standard protocols and connect to our existing enterprise systems will be a tremendous help in our institution. The campus has been trying for years to find good solutions for integrating calendaring and messaging that can really be supported for hundreds of thousands of users in scalable and cost-effective ways. We look forward to working with the great OSAF staff to achieve these goals."

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a private foundation, with assets of approximately $4 billion, which makes grants on a selective basis to institutions in higher education; museums and art conservation; performing arts; population; conservation and the environment; and public affairs. Information about the Foundation, including its annual reports, is available on its website (http://www.mellon.org). The Foundation does not make grants directly to individuals.

The Mellon Foundation currently provides grants in several areas, including Research in Information Technology. This program seeks research and development initiatives intended to create new ways in which information technologies, and particularly digital technologies, can benefit scholarship and research, teaching, and learning.

The Common Solutions Group, (CSG) is a set of leading universities and mid-level networks working together to create a common infrastructure and toolset required for the future of our institutions. Where feasible, these common solutions are provided by commercial providers under contract to the CSG universities. Where commercial solutions are infeasible, highly talented individuals from participating CSG universities are commissioned to provide them. The Common Solutions Group sponsors CSG projects, which provide technology tracking and implementation functions.

CSG institutions include: Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Indiana University, MIT, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California - Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Colorado - Boulder, University of Delaware, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Yale University.

Information on CSG can be found on their website (http://www.stonesoup.org).

The Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) is a non-profit foundation set up in 2001 by Lotus Development Corporation founder, Mitchell Kapor to create and gain wide adoption for software applications of uncompromising quality using open source methods. Its first product, code-named 'Chandler', will be used to manage email, appointments, contacts, and tasks and easily allow information to be shared with friends, family, and colleagues. As an open source application it will be free and will run on the Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms. OSAF operates with a staff of 15 employees and volunteers and was funded initially by a $5 million commitment from Mr. Kapor.

Information on OSAF and the Chandler development plans can be found at (http://www.osafoundation.org).