Introducing the F# Software Foundation

Write for InfoQ

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:

• Mac
• Linux
• Android
• iOS
• HTML5
• GPU

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

Related Topics:

• Development
• F#
• .NET Languages
• .NET
• Open Source
• Microsoft

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