In a world where GitHub use is ubiquitous, it is no longer sufficient for a software foundation to offer just a software repo, mailing list, and website. An enhanced set of services is required as it facilitates increased adoption. The list below represents each of the services that we provide to any project. Host your project with the SODA Foundation (CNCF) because of the following:

Discover More

Foundation

  • A neutral home for your project increases the willingness of developers from other enterprise software companies, start-ups and independent developers to collaborate, contribute, and become committers
  • Endorsement by members of the SODA’s Technical Steering Committee is an independent signal of the quality of your project
  • Existing committers still control your project, and we just ask that you document a neutral governance process
  • Tens of thousands of dollars per year to improve project documentation
  • We’ll fund tools such as LastPass and PagerDuty to use for your project community

 

Program Management

  • Leverage the expertise of its parent organization, The Linux Foundation, which hosts other successful projects including Hyperledger, ONAP, the Linux kernel, Let’s Encrypt, and Node.js.
  • Access to full-time SODA staff who are eager to assist your project in myriad ways and help make it successful
  • Participate in the SODA cross-project, cross-cloud continuous integration program

 

Event Management

  • Events are a part of SODA’s core strategy and they help your project build a community with face-to-face interaction and knowledge sharing
  • Host 2 maintainer sessions (an intro and deep dive)  for your project at our KubeCon + CloudNativeCon events with our world-class events team, bringing together vendors, developers and end users. Submissions to our call for proposals (CFP) process are also encouraged to discuss use of your project. We host this event every year in Europe, China, and North America.
  • Run events targeted specifically for your project (like PromCon or EnvoyCon)
  • Travel funding available for your non-corporate-backed developers and to increase  attendance of women and other underrepresented minorities
  • Connect to our worldwide network of SODA meetup groups and ambassadors to raise awareness of your project
  • SODA engages with the events of its parent, the Linux Foundation, which are called Open Source Summits (OSS) and held every year in North America, Europe, Japan, and China, as well as the invitation-only Open Source Leadership Summit
  • SODA assists with sponsorship leads, media introductions, co-location opportunities and marketing of the event
  • SODA sponsors  third-party cloud events each year including, OSCON, Google Next, AWS Reinvent, DockerCon, Microsoft Build, Alibaba Cloud Conference and more
  • We promote all SODA projects and help connect users and developers to our projects
  • Project contributors are welcome to use our booth as a “home base” for meeting colleagues

Marketing Services and Programs

SODA Foundation provides a full portfolio of marketing services to support community and ecosystem engagement. This includes:

  • Content ranging from SODA webinars, the SODA blog, the Kubernetes blog + KubeWeekly, case studies, newsletters, presentations, and more
  • Oversee blog editorial calendars and writing, editing, and/or identifying and funding freelancers to develop content
  • Quarterly project media velocity reports (e.g., for gRPC)
  • Pre-ordered, project-branded swag via the SODA store
  • Help develop the project website, such as grpc.io

Marketing Communications

  • Generate positive media and analyst coverage to create greater awareness of project milestones, community growth, and developer engagement
  • Promote project news and milestones through other channels: journalists, analysts, and news releases/blogs
  • Identify top publications/podcasts (Bloomberg, Changelog, eWeek, Fortune, Forbes, InfoWorld, The New Stack, etc.) and develop plans to earn coverage through contributed articles, quotes, interviews, and news pick-up
  • Develop thought leadership reports, surveys, success stories, and case studies (print and video)
  • Manage social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Github, Flickr)
  • Secure analyst briefings for inclusion in reports: Gartner, Forrester, IDC, RedMonk, 451 Research and more
  • Coordinate speakers’ bureau for key maintainers/developers (e.g. developer-driven conference panels)
  • Organize media/analyst luncheons,1:1 meetings at key events (for example, we arranged over 70 press and analysts attend CloudNativeCon + KubeCon Seattle and we help schedule back-to-back meetings with project maintainers and contributors for many of them)

 

Certification and Training Services

SODA has made a major investment to implement training, expert certification and provider certification programs for Kubernetes. Over time, we expect to expand these to cover other projects as well

Legal Services

  • SODA legal resources respond to threatened litigation (e.g., we worked with the Kubespray maintainers to change their name back from Kargo after receiving a cease and desist letter)
  • CLA system that integrates with GitHub
  • DCO system that integrates with GitHub
  • Access to SODA and LF staff should any legal questions arise
  • Protect trademarks, such as a UDRP action to take over kubernetes.cn

Internationalization

  • We offer internationalization support for projects that wish to have blog posts translated into Chinese or other languages. For examples, see the TiKV and Harbor blog posts.