Pharo Association

Pharo Association
Name	Pharo Association
Type	Non-profit organization
Founded	2008
Headquarters	Lausanne, Switzerland
Region served	International
Focus	Smalltalk, Open Source, Software Development, Education

Pharo Association

The Pharo Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the Pharo programming environment and advancing the Smalltalk lineage of object-oriented computing. Founded by contributors and users of the Pharo project, the association supports development, documentation, conference organization, and educational outreach for a global community of developers, researchers, and institutions. It operates from Switzerland while coordinating activities with contributors across Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia.

History

The association traces its roots to the emergence of Pharo from the Smalltalk family, associated with milestones such as the Smalltalk-80 implementations and the influence of researchers from Xerox PARC and the DEC Systems Research Center. Early contributors included developers connected to projects like Squeak and institutions such as the INRIA and the University of Bern. Founding members drew on experience from events like the OOPSLA conferences and collaborations with platforms influenced by work from Alan Kay and teams at Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems. The organization formalized after community-driven releases and symposia motivated by needs similar to those addressed by foundations such as the Apache Software Foundation and the Free Software Foundation Europe.

The association’s evolution paralleled shifts in open source governance exemplified by entities such as the Eclipse Foundation and the GNOME Foundation. Key phases included initial coordination of releases reminiscent of practices at Red Hat and community funding models explored by projects like Django Software Foundation and Mozilla Foundation. Over time, the Pharo community adopted tools and workflows influenced by the practices of repositories on GitHub and continuous integration approaches popularized at Travis CI and Jenkins.

Mission and Objectives

The association’s mission mirrors objectives seen in organizations such as the Python Software Foundation and the Ruby Association: to foster sustainable development, education, and adoption of the Pharo environment. Specific aims include supporting research collaborations like those between universities such as University of Cambridge and laboratories such as Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6, maintaining core releases similarly to how the KDE e.V. supports projects, and promoting interoperability with ecosystems influenced by companies like IBM and Google.

Objectives emphasize coordination of releases, stewardship of trademarks as practiced by the Open Invention Network, and facilitation of events inspired by conferences such as ICSE and ESUG. The association also prioritizes outreach models used by organizations like the Linux Foundation and the European Organization for Nuclear Research for translating research into practical tools.

Organizational Structure

The association is governed by a board of directors and working groups, following governance patterns similar to the Apache Software Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. Operational committees oversee areas like release management, finance, and events; these committees reflect structures comparable to those at FreeBSD Foundation and the OpenStack Foundation. Technical governance involves a core team responsible for branch management and quality assurance practices akin to those used by GitLab and Canonical.

Advisory roles often include academics from institutions like EPFL and ETH Zurich and industry contributors from companies with research groups such as Microsoft Research and Facebook AI Research. Legal and fiscal administration follows models similar to non-profits registered under Swiss law, interacting with entities such as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in administrative collaborations.

Programs and Activities

The association organizes annual conferences and workshops modeled after ESUG and Squeakfest, sponsors satellite events at major gatherings like FOSDEM and CeBIT, and supports educational initiatives comparable to Google Summer of Code and the Erasmus Programme. It curates tutorials and curricula for universities akin to syllabi used at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University courses, and runs mentoring programs in the spirit of Outreachy.

Technical activities include coordinated release cycles inspired by the Semantic Versioning approach and integration testing strategies used by projects at Continuous Delivery Foundation. The association also conducts certification and training sessions similar in concept to programs by Red Hat and Oracle Academy.

Projects and Contributions

Key outputs reflect contributions to the Pharo virtual machine, tools, and libraries, paralleling efforts by teams behind OpenJDK and LLVM. The association supports ecosystem projects comparable to package managers like CPAN and npm, and toolchains influenced by editors and environments from Visual Studio Code and Emacs. Community-driven research collaborations produced work presented at venues such as ICFP and SPLASH.

The association has enabled contributions to language interoperability projects analogous to GraalVM and to visualization and IDE tooling akin to PharoLauncher and other community tools. Its stewardship resembles the project support roles of organizations like the Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation.

Membership and Governance

Membership categories include individual, institutional, and corporate tiers similar to models used by the Python Software Foundation and the Linux Foundation. Members participate in elections, working groups, and budget approval processes comparable to democratic procedures at the Free Software Foundation and the KDE e.V.. Governance documents codify procedures for transparency and conflict resolution following best practices used by organizations such as the Open Source Initiative.

Funding sources combine donations, sponsorships from companies like Google and IBM, and revenue from events similarly to funding mixes at Mozilla Foundation and Apache Foundation affiliates. Annual reports and meeting minutes mirror reporting norms of non-profits such as the Internet Society.

Partnerships and Community Engagement

The association partners with academic institutions like University of Oxford, research labs such as INRIA, and industry partners including Cisco Systems and Siemens for collaborative projects. Community engagement includes participation in hackathons connected to HackMIT and regional meetups similar to PyCon and RailsConf satellite events. Outreach to schools and coding bootcamps draws on methods employed by initiatives such as Code.org and Girls Who Code.

International collaborations include joint workshops with organizations like ACM and IEEE and alignment with open source policy discussions involving groups such as European Commission panels and standardization bodies like ISO. The association’s community-driven model echoes cooperative networks found in the OpenStack Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Category:Software organizations