The FOSSDA Foundation

The Free and Open Source Stories Digital Archive Foundation (FOSSDA) is a not-for-profit foundation to engage open source software pioneers, preserve their legacies, and make their stories accessible to open source creators, educators, students, and scholars around the world — now and for generations to come. To achieve this, FOSSDA partners with organizations such as The Apache Software Foundation, Mozilla, and Rochester Institute of Technology, and uses state-of-the-art digital tools and methodologies such as TheirStory.io, Permanent.org, and Aviary to collect, preserve, and make accessible audiovisual interviews, images, and documents.

The FOSSDA Project

• Collect Oral Histories. We will identify and interview, on an ongoing basis, pioneers in open source development and community leaders. Interviews will be done digitally and virtually.
• Organize. Using the TheirStory platform, we will organize, transcribe, and tag the videos for easier reference and use.
• Synthesize. We will liaise with filmmakers, journalists, and content curators to bring the oral histories to life in short and long format films, books, and interactive web sites.
• Educate. We will invite the public to learn about the Free and Open Source movement via our website.
• Preserve. Working with Permanent.org, we will ensure that the raw oral histories remain in the public domain and are permanently available.

Collecting Institutions:

The project will be led by the FOSSDA Foundation in partnership with the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Open@RIT program. Open@RIT, founded in 2020, is a Key Research Center and serves as the Open Programs Office of the university. Its director, Stephen Jacobs has taught FOSS for 13 years at RIT and led the creation of its minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture. The FOSS@MAGIC program for undergraduate education was supported by Red Hat, Inc. who provided input on the program and the creation of the minor.

Additional foundational partners will be identified who will be trained in oral history interviewing by FOSSDA advisor Karen Herman. A journalist by trade, Karen was an interviewer with Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, ran the Television Academy Foundation’s oral history program for more than a decade, and most recently served as VP & Chief Curator for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Remote Recording:

FOSSDA will leverage the TheirStory video platform to remotely record, transcribe, and index remote oral history interviews with open source pioneers. TheirStory is advised by the former Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, Doug Greenberg, and used by over 50 institutions including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, National Library Board of Singapore, University of Wisconsin, Women Military Aviators, Chickaloon Native Village in Alaska, and the Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles.

Public Access & Use:

Oral histories will be made searchable using the Aviary audiovisual accessibility platform. The collecting institutions and the individuals giving their testimonies will collaboratively decide what materials are made publicly accessible. Aviary was co-developed by AVP and Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

Open@RIT may additionally engage its School of Film & Animation, New Media and Digital Humanities faculty and students in developing accompanying open source software, a central website to access and search the collection, documentary film, and other digital experiences to help increase accessibility and awareness of the FOSSDA. This will also facilitate connections between younger generations of OSS creators with pioneers and professionals in the OSS industry.

Long-Term Preservation:

Oral histories will be archived Permanent.org. In addition, each Collecting Institution may set up its own archive with the Permanent Legacy Foundation (Permanent.org).

Permanent is the first secure consumer-grade cloud storage platform backed by a non-profit dedicated to long-term preservation and access. Whereas most cloud storage platforms require annual subscription fees, sustainability is baked into Permanent’s model with a straightforward, one-time payment of $10 per gigabyte of storage. Pay once, store in perpetuity.

Individuals who contribute oral histories will maintain usage rights of their oral histories, and they and their families will receive a copy of their recording through a personal archive on Permanent. Through Permanent, individuals and their families may also donate digital images and documents associated with their oral histories. This process encourages long-term preservation not just for the collecting institutions, but also for the narrators and their families.

RIT’s President, David Munson, sits on the Governing Board of Permanent along with open-source pioneer, Paul Vixie and Internet Hall of Famer Tracy LaQuey Parker. Permanent is advised by leaders in the nonprofit and digital preservation sectors, including Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive; Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation; and Cherie Bush, Deputy Chief Genealogical Officer of FamilySearch.

Training, Consultation & Support:

FOSSDA may partner with Randforce Associates for training and best practices around indexing, establishing a controlled vocabulary, and themes. This will increase the accessibility of these oral histories for educators, students, researchers, and the public. Randforce Associates is led by former University at Buffalo professor of history and senior research scholar, Michael Frisch. Randforce has pioneered methods in indexing and has worked on large-scale indexing projects, including with The HistoryMakers — the nation’s largest African American video oral history collection.

Permanent.org will also provide professional archival services such as digitization, metadata capture, collections management, mixed media preservation, public gallery preparation, sharing back to contributors, and more.

TheirStory will work collaboratively with each collecting institution to provide technical support, project management, and interview training as necessary.