In the context of Evergreen, but with a nod to Breeding’s post, I keep thinking “Why the heck would anyone want to do anything like set up a replica of the Kuali Foundation when the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/) exists to provide most of those services for free?” but then I think – okay, what exactly are the goals for this foundation?

And that’s really the hardest part. The basics are easy: something to funnel charitable donations through (in the US at least – but both Koha and Evergreen are international in scope); something to legally hold and administer trademarks, etc; and something to protect the project participants from legal challenges… but as far as providing direction to and management over the project, as the Kuali approach seems to be (again, just from Breeding’s account) – would we actually want that? And would the companies / cooperatives / individual developers involved in the project accept that?

One goal I could imagine would be seed funding for broadening the development base: developing tutorials and workshops for introductory and intermediate developers that would give them an onramp into the respective codebases. Call it development-focused if you like, but a larger pool of development talent would give libraries more options for getting their particular needs met.