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Introducing the F# Software Foundation

by Jonathan Allen on Jan 01, 2013 |

An independent group of developers and companies have joined forces to create the F# Software Foundation. This organization’s goal is to “is to promote, protect, and advance the F# programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of F# programmers.”

The F# Software Foundation (or FSSF for short) is separate from Microsoft Research, the organization which is currently in charge of the F# language design. The specific areas that FSSF wants to address are:

expand the relevance and importance of F# skills and knowledge
expand the range of technologies which can interoperate with F#
expand the range of platforms where F# can be used
encourage a broad and diverse range of contributors to F#, including commercial, open source and educational contributors
publicize and promote the adoption of F#
facilitate the ongoing development of F#-related technology and educational resources, including contributing to F# conferences

As an informal organization, the F# Software Foundation is not currently accepting funding. Right now it seems that they are mostly interested in manpower, both for maintaining open source projects and for community outreach. Volunteers should write to fsharp@fsharp.org.

Though Microsoft only officially supports F# on Windows, the language is actually available on most platforms including:

This was made possible in part because Microsoft Research choose to release the F# compiler source code under the Apache 2 license.