The jQuery Foundation, the nonprofit trade association that oversees the open-source jQuery project and its ecosystem, has announced an updated mission statement and new mandates going forward.
During a recent meeting of the jQuery Foundation board of directors, the organization—which includes members and corporate sponsors such as Adobe, Famo.us, IBM, Intel, Mozilla, Syncfusion, WordPress and many others—laid out its refreshed set of priorities focusing on accessibility, diversity, education, new project recruitment and outreach.
(Related: Inside the jQuery 3.0 release)
The organization’s priorities going forward, according to its announcement, are as follows:
Diversity: Open source depends on contributions. An organization’s vitality can be destroyed by having a closed group that excludes or even actively antagonizes newcomers. There is incredible value in having a diverse set of contributors with different cultures, backgrounds, perspectives, and skillsets. The jQuery Foundation is committed to improving diversity at all levels, from the development community in general to the projects we host and all the way to our own board, which we acknowledge isn’t very diverse today.
Accessibility: As with diversity, this goal is again in the spirit of inclusiveness. Web technology has many features to make it friendly to users with sight, motor, or cognitive issues. Many Web developers don’t know about them, or defeat them without realizing the implications. We want to change that. Last month’s jQuery SF conference had several excellent speakers who showed what the Web can be like for some users.
Education: This goal crosses all of our priorities and encompasses many different subjects. By educating developers, both on the world of open source and also on the issues of diversity and accessibility, we can make the web an inclusive place.
We will achieve these goals by focusing our efforts on three key areas:
Actively Recruiting New Projects: As you can tell, the jQuery Foundation’s mission goes far beyond the original jQuery projects. We are looking to host projects that we can help. The Foundation offers projects greater visibility, a voice in the standards process, help in managing their community, infrastructure such as a CDN, and other benefits. Projects remain autonomous; the Foundation doesn’t dictate the project’s goals or road map. We can, however, offer financial support for meeting mutually agreed upon project goals.
Defining and Delivering Essential (basic through advanced) Web Developer Education: We want to help developers learn how to contribute to open-source projects, how to run open-source projects, and how to build websites or applications that apply best practices, and beyond that, we want to educate developers on the importance and implementation of diversity and accessibility in their projects. Finally, we want to get the word out about how the jQuery Foundation can help developers do their jobs better.
Growing Our Impact through Outreach: The jQuery Foundation can only accomplish its goals with the support of companies and individuals who believe in the mission. If you or your company [are] interested in joining us to improve the Web development community, please get in touch info@jquery.org. Like the open-source projects we host, the jQuery Foundation itself is powered by memberships, volunteers and donations! Those of you who have already contributed, we thank you for supporting the mission.
