Community source

Community Source is a type of software development used in colleges and universities that builds on the practices of open source software communities. The software of these collective efforts are distributed via an approved Open Source Initiative (OSI) license. Examples include the Sakai Project, Kuali, and Open Source Portfolio. Copyright for the software is often held by an independent foundation (organized as a 501c3 corporation in the United States) modeled on the contributor agreements, licensing, and distribution practices of the Apache Foundation.

An important distinctive characteristic of community source as opposed to plain open source is that the community includes some organizations or institutions that are committing their resources to the community, in the form of human resources or other financial elements. In this way, the open source project will have both more solid support, rather than purely volunteer efforts as found in other open source communities, and will possibly be shaped by the strategic requirements of the institution committing the resource.