CHABOT

Foundations and organisations

4 minute read 819 words

This directory covers foundations, research firms, standards bodies, and practitioner communities relevant to Developer Relations.

Developer Relations Foundation

Formation. The Linux Foundation announced its intent to form the project on September 16, 2024, then announced it as fully formed on August 25, 2025.

Mission. To advance developer relations as a professional practice and increase awareness of it as a driver of business value.

Steering Committee (inaugural cohort). Wesley Faulkner, Stacey Kruczek, Arun Gupta, Divya Mohan, Tabs Fakier, Jayson DeLancey, Aditya Oberai, Ana Jiménez, and others.

Activities. Working groups, conferences, professional standards, community programs, advocacy for the discipline.

Scope. Hosts working groups, events, professional-practice projects, and shared resources.

Linux Foundation (parent)

Beyond hosting the Developer Relations Foundation, the Linux Foundation hosts many sub-foundations and projects relevant to DevRel:

  • CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation). Kubernetes and cloud-native projects.
  • OpenJS Foundation. Node.js, jQuery, Electron, and others.
  • PyTorch Foundation. Hosted since 2022.
  • GraphQL Foundation. Stewardship of the GraphQL specification and its supporting ecosystem.
  • Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Security guidance, tools, and initiatives for open-source software.
  • TODO Group. Open-source program offices community.
  • LFX Community Data Platform (formerly crowd.dev).

DevRel teams at some large companies maintain foundation memberships and contribute staff time to their projects.

CMX Hub (community management)

  • Founded. 2014 by David Spinks.
  • Focus. Community management broadly; substantial DevRel overlap.
  • Acquired. By Bevy in 2019.
  • Events. CMX Summit, CMX Connect events globally.
  • Awards. CMX Community Industry Awards.

The DevRel Collective

A long-running Slack-based community of DevRel practitioners.

How to join. Apply on their site; invitations typically processed by community moderators.

Members use the community for peer questions, job discussions, and programme advice.

Developer Marketing Alliance (DMA) / Product Marketing Alliance (PMA)

Operator of the Developer Marketing Certified and Developer Relations Certified courses. Also runs:

  • Developer Marketing Summit.
  • Developer Relations Summit.
  • Various smaller events.

Membership. Paid; provides access to community, courses, events.

SlashData (the analyst firm)

SlashData publishes recurring developer research:

  • State of the Developer Nation reports (twice yearly).
  • State of Developer Relations reports.
  • Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide book.
  • DevRelX Podcast.
  • Custom developer-population research for technology companies.

RedMonk

Industry analyst firm focused on developers, founded 2002.

  • Founders. Stephen O’Grady, James Governor.
  • Output. Blog posts, research reports, conference talks, the Programming Language Rankings.
  • Research. RedMonk’s New Kingmakers thesis examines developers as technology decision-makers.

Major League Hacking (MLH)

Student-hackathon organiser founded in 2013.

  • Scope. Operates an annual season of student hackathons globally; partners with corporate sponsors.
  • DevRel relevance. DevRel teams sponsor MLH events to work with student developers.
  • 2026. Matthew Revell (DevRelCon founder) leads DevRel strategy and consulting at MLH.

CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics for Open Source Software)

A Linux Foundation project defining metrics standards for open-source community health.

  • Output. Metrics models, working groups, software (GrimoireLab and others).
  • Use. Teams can adopt its shared metric definitions when analysing open-source community health.

TODO Group

A Linux Foundation working group for Open Source Program Office (OSPO) leaders.

  • Activities. Sharing best practices for running open-source programs inside companies.
  • Membership. Open to OSPO practitioners.

OASIS, W3C, ECMA, and IETF

For DevRel teams whose product touches web standards, these organisations matter:

  • W3C. Web standards.
  • WHATWG. Living standards (HTML, DOM).
  • ECMA TC39. ECMAScript standardisation.
  • IETF. Internet protocols.
  • OASIS. Industry standards including SAML and MQTT.

DevRel teams at companies whose product depends on these standards often have engineers participating.

Industry consortiums

  • Open Source Initiative (OSI). Custodian of the Open Source Definition; licence approval.
  • Free Software Foundation. Different philosophical lineage; relevant for some communities.
  • Mozilla Foundation. Web standards and MDN.
  • Rust Foundation. Independent stewardship of the Rust programming language and ecosystem since 2021.

OSS sustainability orgs

  • Open Collective. Pooled-funding for open-source projects.
  • GitHub Sponsors. Direct sponsorship of maintainers.
  • Tidelift. Subscription-based maintainer support.
  • Sovereign Tech Fund. German government program funding critical open-source infrastructure.
  • NumFOCUS. Sponsoring scientific Python ecosystem (NumPy, Pandas, Jupyter, etc.).

Conferences as community-builders

Several conferences themselves function as community-organising entities:

  • DevRelCon / Hoopy. Discussed throughout this almanac.
  • All Things Open.
  • Write the Docs.
  • FOSDEM.

Ways to engage

  • Join the DevRel Collective for practitioner discussion.
  • Follow the Developer Relations Foundation’s working groups and published material.
  • Use DevRelCon talks, SlashData reports, and RedMonk research for current practice and industry data.
  • Contribute to a foundation relevant to the product domain, such as CNCF, OpenJS, or a Linux Foundation project, when the team has technical work or governance expertise to offer.

See also