Hachyderm and Nivenly

An update on the partnership between Hachyderm and Nivenly

Hey Hachyderm!

We’re continuing to post on more important topics as previously promised. For today’s topic, we wanted to cover something that we know a lot of people have had questions about, the relationship between Hachyderm and Nivenly. Our discussion will focus on the relationship structure, our commitment to Nivenly, and our assurance to the community.

Structure of Nivenly and Hachyderm

The Nivenly Foundation is founded on the principle that project maintainers should share in their projects’ success. This foundation brings sustainable governance to open source projects and communities around the globe and supports the maintainers’ independent oversight of their projects. In addition, Nivenly is a decentralized, democratically-governed non-profit technical organization, that focuses on building an equitable future for technology communities.

In 2023, Hachyderm was transitioned from individual private ownership to stewardship under Nivenly. This transition helped to give the Hachyderm the financial structure needed to get to a stable point. This included access to a non-profit organization that can help facilitate donations and help us handle the legal requirements that come with scaling.

Nivenly’s relationship to Hachyderm is comparable to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) stewardship of Kubernetes. The parallels in our relationship do not stop at structure, but extend to our mission as well. Having accepted Kubernetes as its first project in 2015, CNCF provides a neutral home for Kubernetes, fostering its growth and ensuring its development through a community-driven, collaborative approach. This relationship has facilitated Kubernetes’ evolution into a leading platform for container orchestration, widely adopted in the industry for deploying and managing applications in cloud environments. Nivenly aims to enable the same growth in safe spaces through Hachyderm.

Our commitments to Nivenly

Our commitment to Nivenly is plain and simple: Ensure that hackers, professionals, and enthusiasts that are passionate about life, respect, and digital freedom are provided a safe space where they can find peace and balance.

While this is a tall order, everyone at Hachyderm believes and has a commitment to deliver on this vision.

Our assurance to the Community

Over the months, we have made a number of posts discussing the moderation process and the team as a whole. You can find more details from last May’s Moderator Minutes https://community.hachyderm.io/blog/2023/05/08/a-minute-from-the-moderators/. We won’t be rehashing the details of those posts here. Instead, we want to share with the community how our relationship with Nivenly impacts the decisions that we make as a moderation team.

We look to Nivenly for reassurance that we are acting in a way that aligns with the stated commitment. In addition, Nivenly supports us in ensuring that we have the support necessary to deliver on those commitments. However, Nivenly doesn’t otherwise participate in the day to day of Hachyderm’s operations. We firmly believe that this distinction is of utmost significance. By enabling Hachyderm to have the independence to operate independently, we can ensure the decisions that we made do the best to represent the community as a whole.

Disclaimer: There are people who volunteer at both Nivenly and Hachyderm, but their roles are separated by the tasks that they are completing.