Chairing the OpenCommit Foundation
I’m happy to share that I’ve taken on the role of Chair of the Board at the OpenCommit Foundation.
If you know me or followed me here or elsewhere, you’ll know that open source has been a big part of my life for decades. From writing tools and libraries for fun, to contributing to projects like Forgejo, to running self-hosted experiments in my homelab — FLOSS has always been where my curiosity and community meet.
That’s why this role feels both natural and important to me. OpenCommit’s mission is simple but ambitious: to support the creation, maintenance, and archiving of Free and Open Source Software in a sustainable way. We’re not here to chase profit. We’re here to make sure the digital commons stays healthy.
One of the first services we’re building under the foundation is OpenFork — a Forgejo-powered platform we’ll offer freely to open source developers. The idea is to provide a reliable alternative for collaboration that isn’t dependent on corporate platforms, lowering the single point of failure risks of hosting on certain corporate platforms.
For me, this isn’t just a technical project. It’s about giving back to the ecosystem that shaped my career, my hobbies, and frankly, much of how I think about technology.
Open source is how I learned. It’s how I build. It’s how I connect with others. Helping to protect and grow that space feels like the right thing to do.
We also want to acknowledge the excellent work of others in this space, such as Codeberg and similar initiatives. Rather than competing, we see ourselves as part of a growing ecosystem of federated forges. Our aim is to collaborate, to learn from the paths already taken, and to contribute to a future where developers can choose resilient, interoperable platforms.
With OpenFork, we hope to become a cornerstone in that federated landscape.
I’ll share more about OpenFork and our roadmap soon — but for now, I’m just grateful and excited to help steer this ship.
If you care about FLOSS and want to stay up to date, follow along here or visit opencommit.eu to see how you can help.
— Martijn