Introducing our own Software Foundation

30th October, 2003

Dear wxWidgets users and contributors,

These are exciting times for wxWidgets. I'd like to discuss some recent developments of strategic importance for our project. Like other significant open source projects such as Python and OpenOffice, wxWidgets now has its own organisation to promote and protect the project's interests: the wxWindows Software Foundation. It's a non-profit organisation with a board of five directors, three of whom are taken from the wxWidgets development team.

We are delighted and honoured to have Mitch Kapor as our chairman. As you probably know, Mitch has an illustrious history in the software industry; the designer of 1-2-3 and founder of Lotus Corporation, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, his Open Source Applications Foundation is a major user of wxWidgets and wxPython. He is giving us practical help in setting up our own Foundation, together with colleagues from the OSAF. We stand to benefit enormously from the OSAF's collective wisdom, and could ask for no better chairman than a man who has been a leading exponent of freedom in the software industry for many years.

By now you may also know that Borland will be supporting wxWidgets in future editions of its C++BuilderX developer tool. Borland has been contributing expertise and funding to help in areas such as enhanced run-time type information, the new build system and code reengineering, and will continue to invest in wxWidgets while supporting its open source status. This is a terrific boost for the project. We will see further support for interactive GUI design, and support through their funding and engineering time. Borland will also push development in the mobile arena. Together with OSAF, they are actively supporting the wxWindows Software Foundation, and Borland's Rob Farnum is a director on its board. The highly-respected tools company has interesting contacts in the industry, so we can expect something of a chain reaction in wxWidgets uptake and publicity.

We're asking contributors to sign a Copyright Assignment form to give the organisation sufficient rights over the wxWidgets code base to fight any legal battles. For further details about this, please see the wxWindows Software Foundation page and links to Word and PDF versions of the form. We hope that the Software Foundation FAQ will answer most of your questions about the Foundation and assignment form, but do contact Julian Smart at julian@wxwidgets.org or use the mailing lists if you have any further questions about the form or concerns about the Foundation.

What will all this mean for users of wxWidgets? Users (and their bosses!) can be assured that wxWidgets is taken seriously by the industry, and that the project is committed to protecting its intellectual property. With the support of a major tool vendor, and an organisation to help raise our profile, wxWidgets is now in a great position to consolidate its advantages and embrace new platforms.

Thank you for reading this -- and for supporting wxWidgets!

Julian Smart
Founder, wxWidgets