Funding for preservation software development

The Open Preservation Foundation (formerly the Open Planets Foundation) is launching a new model for funding the development of preservation-related software. Quoting from the announcement:

‘Over the last year the OPF has established a solid foundation for ensuring the sustainability of digital preservation technology and knowledge,’ explains Dr. Ross King, Chair of the OPF Board. ‘Our new strategic plan was introduced in November 2014 along with community surveys to establish the current state of the art. We developed our annual plan in consultation with our members and added JHOVE to our growing software portfolio. The new membership and software supporter models are the next steps towards realising our vision and mission.’ …

The software supporter model allows organisations to support individual digital preservation software products and ensure their ongoing sustainability and maintenance. We are launching support for JHOVE based on its broad adoption and need for active stewardship. It is also a component in several leading commercial digital preservation solutions. While it remains fully open source, supporters can steer our stewardship and maintenance activities and receive varying levels of technical support and training.

I have a selfish personal interest in spreading the word. At the moment, I’m between contracts, and I wouldn’t mind getting some funding from OPF to resume development work on JHOVE. I know its code base better than anyone else, I worked on it without pay as a hobby for a year or so after leaving Harvard, and I’d enjoy working on it some more if I could just get some compensation. This is possible, but only if there’s support from outside.

US libraries have been rather insular in their approach to software development. They’ll use free software if it’s available, but they aren’t inclined to help fund it. If they could each set aside some money for this purpose, it would help assure the continued creation and maintenance of the open source software which is important to their mission.

How about it, Harvard?