At Node+JS Interactive in Montreal, the OpenJS Foundation announced that it accepted Electron into the Foundation's incubation program. The Foundation is committed to supporting the healthy growth of the JavaScript ecosystem and web technologies by providing a neutral organization to host and sustain projects, as well as collaboratively fund activities for the benefit of the community at large.
The OpenJS Foundation is host to a number of open source JavaScript projects including jQuery, Node.js, and webpack. It's supported by 30 corporate and end-user members, including GoDaddy, Google, IBM, Intel, Joyent, and Microsoft. Electron is an open–source framework for building cross-platform desktop applications with web technologies.
This is an exciting move for Electron, and we see it as a next step in our evolution as an open-source project.
Electron joining the OpenJS Foundation does not change how Electron is made, released, or used — and does not directly affect developers building applications with Electron. Even though Electron was originally created at GitHub in 2013, it is currently maintained by a number of organizations and individuals. In 2019, Electron codified its governance structure and invested heavily into formalizing how decisions affecting the entire project are made. We believe that having multiple organizations and developers investing in and collaborating on Electron makes the project stronger.
Lifting Electron up from being owned by a single corporate entity and moving it into a neutral foundation focused on supporting the web and JavaScript ecosystem is a natural next step as we mature as an open-source project.
You can read up on the foundation, its mission, and its members on the OpenJSF website. For more information and quotes about the acceptance of Electron into the OpenJSF incubation program, check out the official press release. To learn more about the humans behind Electron and how they work together, take a look at our Governance page.
To get started with Electron itself, take a peek at our documentation.
📝Press release follows, not for the blog
Electron joins the OpenJS Foundation
The popular web framework for building desktop apps plays an important role in the adoption and development of JavaScript.
MONTREAL- December 11, 2019 - The OpenJS Foundation today announced the open source web framework Electron has been accepted into the Foundation's incubation program. Electron, an open source framework created for building desktop apps using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, is based on Node.js and Chromium. Additionally, it is widely used on many well-known applications including Discord, Microsoft Teams, OpenFin, Skype, Slack, Trello, Visual Studio Code, and many more.
The OpenJS Foundation, which provides vendor-neutral support for sustained growth within the open source JavaScript community, delivered the news at the Foundation’s flagship event, Node+JS Interactive, in Montreal.
“We’re heading into 2020 excited and honored by the trust the Electron project leaders have shown through this significant contribution to the new OpenJS Foundation,” said Robin Ginn, Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation. “Electron is a powerful development tool used by some of the most well-known companies and applications. On behalf of the community, I look forward to working with Electron and seeing the amazing contributions they will make.”
Electron’s cross-platform capabilities make it possible to build and run apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Initially developed by GitHub in 2013, today the framework is maintained by a number of developers and organizations. Electron is suited for anyone who wants to ship visually consistent, cross-platform applications, fast and efficiently.