Announce plan to move to foundation

_posts/2024-10-03-plan-to-move-debezium-to-foundation.adoc

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  Moving Debezium to a Foundation
+date:   2024-10-03
+tags: [ announcement ]
+author: ccranfor
+---
+
+== tl;dr
+
+We are considering moving Debezium to a Software Foundation to expand our community, become more open and transparent in our roadmap and decisions, and encourage multi-vendor participation and execution.
+
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+
+== Introduction
+
+Since its inception in late 2015, Debezium has strived to be the leading open-source platform for Change Data Capture.
+A project that started focusing on two connectors has now grown into a portfolio of connectors for nearly a dozen different database vendors.
+
+Over the past several years, there has been rapid growth in multiple areas.
+We’ve introduced sink connectors to our portfolio to improve the user experience and offer solutions for full end-to-end Change Data Capture pipelines.
+We have introduced supplementary components such as the Debezium Operator and Debezium Server, providing alternative deployment options rather than just Kafka Connect as the only runtime.
+
+But beyond that, the team has grown in other ways, too.
+Not only have we had the pleasure of expanding our committer team, but we’ve also enlisted nearly a half-dozen volunteers from the community who help contribute, maintain, and lead our community-led connector portfolio for Google Spanner, Vitess, Informix, and Cassandra.
+
+The project’s overall success would not have been possible without the passion, dedication, and collaboration of our volunteers, contributors, committers, and the extraordinary and vibrant user community.
+
+== Why move to a Foundation?
+
+For Debezium to remain the leading open-source platform for Change Data Capture, we must consider long-term goals to enable the project to adapt to a fast-paced, highly innovative landscape.
+
+Our goals are simple:
+
+* Continue to grow our community
+* Increase the adoption and awareness of Debezium
+* Embrace transparency in our roadmap and decision-making
+* Encourage multi-vendor participation and execution
+
+We believe that moving Debezium to a Foundation will help drive these goals more organically, benefiting everyone involved.
+
+== Support and Alignment with Red Hat Values
+
+Red Hat is dedicated to fostering a vendor-neutral culture for collaboration on Debezium, like other projects such as the Linux kernel, Kubernetes, OpenJDK, and Quarkus.
+
+== Community Feedback
+
+So far, all preliminary discussions about this change have been positive.
+But we want to make sure that we make a decision that provides a net benefit, so we’ve created a set of criteria to evaluate foundations, which includes:
+
+* Remain visible, relevant, and recognizable in a foundation’s portfolio.
+* Maintain our current release processes without extra processes or steps.
+* Make independent, self-informed decisions rather than those imposed.
+* License flexibility to continue using a wide array of third-party libraries.
+* Flexibility to create sub-projects or use the Debezium brand, focusing on new areas of interest or proofs of concepts that could expand the project’s portfolio.
+
+We invite you, the broader Debezium community, to get involved in the conversation.
+You can share your concerns and constructive feedback on our https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/debezium[mailing list] or https://debezium.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/302529-community-general/topic/Move20Debezium20to20a20Foundation[zulip chat].
+This is crucial for us to decide the best home for Debezium.
+
+Let’s guarantee that Debezium continues to grow, thrive, and remain the leader in Change Data Capture together!