Over the holidays it seems we never have enough time. The demands of life pile up around us; work, entertaining, parties, shopping, my relationship, the kids… the list goes on and on. It was over this holiday season that the demands of Jumper became a little too much to manage.
With my consulting career growing at an ever faster pace it was already difficult to manage new clients and keep up with the demands of running the Jumper project. Throw in all the holiday pressures and I had one of those moments. No not a break down, as any of you who talked to me during the holidays probably guessed… a moment of clarity – a hard realization.
Jumper needed to follow a new organizational path. It was not working as a commercial entity. Despite my Herculean efforts to wear every hat it was becoming impossible to keep up with the demands. The popularity of our software is growing rapidly, downloads continue unabated rapidly approaching 10,000, hits to the website continue to grow at over 300% for 2010, calls and emails for support are keeping pace with this growth. In fact, they seem to grow exponentially as I typically provide this support for free.
It was simply time to reorganize. To transition from a private to a public entity that could continue to promote the benefits of collaborative search and universal (as in any information) bookmarking that I believe in so much. It was time for Jumper to become a non-profit foundation that could begin to grow on its own. This will free-up the many community members to make their own ideas happen, give you control of the direction of the software, and of course allow you to actually put your participation formally on your resume. And yes I have done my share of reference letter in the last two years…
As a non-profit foundation we will invite community members to fill one of six board seats that will be open each year. This annual term allows a broad range of community members to participate over time, each adding their own unique contributions. If you would like to be a Jumper Foundation Director please reach out to me and let me know. Eventually each board member will be nominated and elected annually as is defined in the foundations charter, however, in the beginning as we get this up and going I will be appointing the first board members. As a board member you will have access to all of the Jumper forums; you will be an admin on Jumper Sourceforge and on the Jumper Developers Group, a blogger in the Jumper 2.0 blog, with access to post on the Jumper Twitter and Facebook pages.
Any person may apply to be a member of the project and be eligible to be a member of the Association under our new Rules. All affairs of the Jumper Association shall be managed by the Board. There shall be no designated officers of the Association. All nominated or elected board members shall govern in a round-table forum with decisions made only by majority vote. Any three members of the board meeting via conference call or online meeting constitute a quorum for the conduct of the business of a meeting of the Board. Pretty informal and relaxed and completely fitting with our beach front digs.
I have corresponded with many of the community members over the holidays before making this change and have received unanimous support in this new direction. The consensus has been that the Jumper project is about people producing free and open software and contributing to something as a team for the benefit of others. To quote some of the emails “the Jumper project reflects the spirit of collaboration and fun and thrives on strong community feedback”, “we need better governance that allows for diverse businesses and organizations to confidently invest in its use and further development”, “it is important that it remain open to the participation of anybody who can contribute value and is willing to work with the community.” All of these comments, reflected in numerous emails received from community members, express the goals that will be better served by organizing Jumper 2.0 as a non-profit public entity open to everyone around the globe.
Perhaps most importantly this change is aimed squarely at meeting the concerns of the core development teams. Many of you have come and gone from the project over the last two years expressing dissatisfaction about Jumper Networks commercial control of the software. You have felt you had no voice in its government or the future direction of Jumper 2.0. This was never my intention and I regret the arrogance of this thinking. The contributions of all the developers is vital and by changing our organization to empower our community, to cede control of the core development more fairly to all of the developers will allow their skills and expertise to lead the project forward in a new direction. As it should be.
Jumper Networks Inc will cease to exist. It will transition all its assets to the Jumper 2.0 Foundation whose charter will be published on our new website www.jumpersearch.com. We will continue to develop and improve this award-winning software project and ensure that it continues to be released under the GNU General Public License. I will of course remain a part of the development team going forward and continue to provide free support to anyone who emails or calls. But more importantly I look forward hearing from many of you who wish to take a more active and decisive role in the project.
Thanks,
Steve Perry
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