Discussion
· 3 hr ago

Proposal: Creating an Open Source Support Foundation for the InterSystems Ecosystem

#Development Environment #InterSystems IRIS

Over the past several years, the InterSystems Developer Community has accumulated more than 1,000 open-source projects. Many of them serve as examples and learning materials — but a significant number have become useful tools, libraries, integrations, and real-world components used in production.

Some of these projects are mine, and like many community developers, I’ve seen the same recurring problem:

  • It’s easy to create an open-source project.
  • It’s hard to maintain, support, and develop it sustainably — especially without funding.

Writing code is one thing.
Supporting it for years, keeping up with new IRIS versions, building CI pipelines, writing documentation, fixing issues, reviewing PRs — all of this demands both time and motivation, and the biggest motivator is often financial support.

This is not a new challenge.
The global open-source world has faced this for decades and has developed various models to support OSS ecosystems.

I believe it’s time for the InterSystems community to start a discussion about adopting a similar model.

🎯 The Opportunity for InterSystems and Its Community

InterSystems technologies power mission-critical systems in healthcare, finance, government, logistics, and more. The developer ecosystem around IRIS continues to grow, and open-source tools play a significant role:

  • ORMs and connectors
  • CI/CD integrations
  • SQL and interoperability tooling
  • Development frameworks
  • Custom VSCode extensions
  • Integration adapters
  • Testing utilities
  • Community SDKs
  • Example apps evolving into real libraries

Many of these tools are widely used but maintained by individuals in their spare time.
This limits their long-term stability and slows down ecosystem innovation.

InterSystems and its customers benefit greatly from these projects — but there is no central way to fund them or support their maintainers.

🏛 Proposal: Establish an Open Source Foundation for InterSystems-Related Projects

Similar to foundations in other ecosystems, we could create an independent or semi-independent structure that would:

1. Collect Funding

  • Donations from companies using InterSystems technologies
  • Contributions from InterSystems itself
  • Sponsorships from partners
  • Community donations

2. Allocate Funding

  • Small grants for library maintenance
  • Bounties for features and bug fixes
  • Program-based funding (e.g., “Strategic Libraries Program”)
  • Long-term sponsorship for critical OSS projects

3. Provide Organizational and Technical Governance

  • Assistance with licensing, documentation, and governance
  • Shared CI infrastructure
  • Security audits
  • Help with onboarding additional maintainers

4. Promote High-Quality OSS Projects

  • A curated list of “Supported Community Libraries”
  • Recognition programs
  • Best practices and standards for development

5. Increase Engagement from InterSystems Customers

  • Many enterprise users rely on community tools
  • Funding these tools benefits everyone in the ecosystem

This would bring structure, sustainability, and motivation to developers who invest time in building tools that help the entire InterSystems world move forward.

📊 How Other Ecosystems Solve This Problem (Short Comparison)

Foundation / Model What They Support How They Fund It Applicability to InterSystems
Apache Software Foundation Hundreds of large projects (Hadoop, Spark, Kafka) Corporate sponsors, donations Strong governance example, but very heavyweight
Python Software Foundation (PSF) Python tools, packaging, events Memberships, corporate sponsors Great model for language-centric ecosystems
Linux Foundation Kernel, CNCF, Kubernetes, etc. Corporate funding, governing boards Too large-scale, but offers good structural inspiration
OpenJS Foundation Node.js, JS tooling Corporate members Example of supporting developer tools & libraries
Rust Foundation Language, tooling, compiler Corporate supporters, grants Modern, transparent, focused — a good reference
OpenCollective / GitHub Sponsors Individual or small OSS projects Direct crowdfunding Could be a starting point for InterSystems projects

Most of these ecosystems recognized early that OSS maintainers need support — not just enthusiasm.

InterSystems could take inspiration from these models to build something proportional to the size and needs of its own ecosystem.

🤝 Call for Community Discussion

This is not a final solution — it is a proposal to start a broader conversation.

Questions for the community:

  • Would an InterSystems OSS Foundation be beneficial?
  • What role should InterSystems officially play?
  • How can customers contribute?
  • Which projects deserve priority funding?
  • Should this be an official foundation or a community-driven initiative?
  • Should we start with a simple OpenCollective group as a pilot?

I believe this conversation is important for the long-term health and growth of the InterSystems developer ecosystem.

Discussion (4)3
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sween · 2 hr ago

I like this proposal, and would like to be in the conversation... It would be helpful to send out a survey with those questions (and more) and dump the results in an LLM and argue about the responses collectively in that discussion.

There is a divide in the open exchange between tech examples, etc and integrations, drivers, etc that cultivate maintenance because they are in use and chasing versions... your work is in this category for sure with the python dbi driver, lately go, etc.    These projects need to be pulled from Open Exchange immediately, or just be placeholder that point to an opencollective (as an example), I think OpenExchange is giving the illusion that OSS is being supported in some way, but not in the ways you listed above.  There is also a proliferation of github projects out there with the two words "intersystems" and "community" slammed together in some shape or form out there that gas light this subject.

Id pipe up during this call and probably blather on about the following:

Are there any examples other than the above that are based on a derivative proprietary work ?
What are the previous attempts at this ? I think Globals java was Open Sourced, Id like to undrstand the legal behind that and understand the shortcomings/successes of that...I think rzf may be something on the horizon, any others ?

Id like to understand what went on with the VSCode extensions as an example and have that play out differently with oss too.

I have fallen in the trap of being in between these worlds, OSS and proprietary software and want to share the experience... in a nutshell, I got these two responses:  InterSystems: you cant resell that.  OSS (spark library), Apache2: you cant distribute that.

Ultimately I think what needs to happen is we go out on our own and provide incontraverable value and have some thick skin, knowing that intersystems can fork it at anytime and "do it better" or resist "selling" the project in any shape or form.  We'd also need to dismiss any wind that internally at InterSystems "its in the backlog" and not let that deter development.

InterSystems would have to look at the community output/features/governance, along with the 5 pillars you listed above, and know that they would be better off funding the project externally than doing it themselves. Also, if its important enough, allowing for them to provide priorities in the development... we would need to be meticulous around the release cycles of IRIS too.

Ill tell you that when I saw your post about the Go Library and immediately framed a project that I well know could take advantage of your library with a ++, and would push InterSystems hand in this regard... it may be a cool excercise to see what would happen if the Go library were forked immediately under an Apache2 license or something.  I have a good idea here.

The elephant in the room is the legal needed to avoid violating agreements ourselves, crossing InterSystems boundaries to maintain a healthy collaboration, or allowing some other company to fork it and bury it in their monitoring app or something without acknowleding the component in their solution... The open collective pilot would help shake out some gaps for sure.

I think we could all use our Global Masters points to score a bunch of socks or something and sell them on ebay to start an initial fund to derive percentages, org structures, yadda yadda.

Im in, and would prioritize attending and contributing to the discussion.

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Yaron Munz · 1 hr ago

As InterSystems Technology is not an open source, it is not fair, in my opinion to compare the community open-source library of tools and examples to others (e.g. Linux, Apache etc.) since its not possible to use them without a valid license of a product (IRIS, Cache). As such its InterSystems motivation and also a rational should be to support this library, similar to their (massive) support for the community.

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Robert Cemper · 45 min ago

I fully support your proposal.
I published >700 reviews for the actual 1156 visible packages.
And there are several challenges to be addressed with any new structure.

  • The reviews with stars focus on an actual individual snapshot.
  • Similar to the code or example, they age and may become invalid.
  • Ongoing maintenance by creators can't be expected
  • So a clear separation between actual and maintained packages and those just kept for historical reference could be useful.
  • The decision for maintenance must be left to the creator
    • Example:
    • If some essential function in IRIS is dropped without replacement
    • with no acceptable workaround, I'd move it to the archive
    • I just had to unpublish some packages for this reason 
  • Another category could be packages where ISC takes responsibility.

This isn't a solution, but a step in between to improve the actual situation
I wonder how many of the 1156 packages might move to the archive without maintenance

There is no voting on the numbers added

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