The new OpenNTF Alliance was established in May 2009. The Alliance is group of equal members with the common goal of providing open source applications based on Lotus Notes/Domino. The organization will have a minimal bureaucracy, but will put in place processes to efficiently manage the open source content with appropriately rigorous IP policies.

The current members of the Alliance can be found here.

Levels of Involvement

There are different levels of involvement possible. See here to get an overview.


Steering Committee and Technical Committee

The OpenNTF Alliance is governed by a steering committee. A technical committee owns the technical infrastructure and other technical aspects of OpenNTF. More committees may be created as needed.

The steering committee is responsible for the strategy of OpenNTF and its finances. It has nine members who are elected by all members for two year terms. No family of companies may have more than one representative on the steering committee. Every year approximately half the committee members are elected. The chair is elected by the members of this committee.

The technical committee is responsible for the technical direction of the Alliance. It maintains the OpenNTF infrastructure, identifies technical needs of the community, ensures the IPR policy is followed, etc. The steering committee can name people to the technical committee.


IP Model

The OpenNTF Alliance wants to make the code as easy to reuse as possible for all purposes. The Apache License version 2 (ALv2 - see here) is not only the most widely accepted open source license in the commercial world, it permits usage of the code in commercial software as well as in free and open source software. There are no obligations to donate modified code back to OpenNTF.

OpenNTF strongly recommends the usage of ALv2 for all future projects. Owners of existing code on OpenNTF are encouraged to update to ALv2. The new catalog (see below) contains code under ALv2 in order to allow consumers to find reusable code on OpenNTF as easily as possible. A common license for all code on OpenNTF is important so that companies don't have to do a legal evaluation of each snippet of code from OpenNTF. Exceptions to this rule are permitted where the contributed code incorporates code acquired under another license such as the Eclipse Public License.

In order to be able to use ALv2 for code on OpenNTF, due diligence needs to be done. Contributors have to follow an inbound contribution process. They need to ensure that they contribute their own code and have the rights to give OpenNTF extensive rights to distribute the code However, the IP (intellectual property) is retained by the author of the code.


More details

Details about the governance and IP model can be found here:
Terms of Use
Members Agreement and IPPolicy
Contribution Process
Employers Consent
Privacy Policy