The Foundation
Open standards, protocols and shared infrastructure for socially-beneficial software.
We publish specifications, protocols, reference implementations, and research that the world's charities, community organisations, and builders can adopt freely. The work has a particular focus on enabling Muslim developers, academics, and communities to collaborate openly, but the output itself is for everyone, and intentionally vendor-neutral. The name has two readings, both intended:
Foundation as in waqf, a permanent, public endowment of work. Nobody owns it; everybody can build on it. Foundation as in the base layer of a stack. The primitives that other people's products sit on top of.
What we publish
Open API standards - vendor-neutral specifications that anyone can adopt Protocols - interoperability layers for community infrastructure Reference implementations - working code so adoption isn't theoretical RFCs and research - published thinking from academics, practitioners, and operators, with proper attribution
Everything is permissively licensed (Apache 2.0 by default), self-hostable, and free of central authorities or mandatory hubs. Projects Foundation - the monorepo The home of all current work. Project #1 inside it: OCAS - Open Charity API Standard A vendor - neutral OpenAPI 3.1 specification any charity can adopt to expose donations, subscriptions, campaigns, receipts and tax-relief declarations in a standard shape. First-class support for Gift Aid, US 501(c)(3), Canadian CRA, Australian DGR and seven more international schemes, alongside Zakat (with 8 Asnaf categories), Sadaqah, Waqf, Qurbani, Aqiqah, Fidya, Kaffarah, and interest purification. Status: draft v0.1
How to get involved
Adopt a spec. The fastest way to help is to implement one of our standards in a real product and tell us what broke. Adoption stories beat theoretical critique. Open a PR. Country profiles for tax relief, translations, schema clarifications, additional faith traditions (tithing, ma'aser, daana, dasvandh, etc.), all welcome. Submit an RFC. Got a theory, a paper, or a protocol idea? Open a discussion. We're especially interested in contributions from universities and researchers in social finance, ethical computing, and equitable distribution. Critique. If a design choice is wrong, say so. Open an issue with the reasoning and we'll engage with it seriously.
Principles
Open by default. Apache 2.0 or equivalent. No "open core" with paid extensions. Vendor neutral. Specs don't presume Stripe, PayPal, AWS, or any single provider. Self-hostable. No mandatory central registry, hub, or gateway. Religiously informed where it matters, religiously neutral on the surface. We model Zakat properly because it has technical requirements (the 8 Asnaf, hawl, nisab, purification rules); we don't proselytise. Practical over performative. Working code, real adopters, concrete examples. Less manifesto, more YAML.
Code of conduct All projects under The Foundation adhere to the Contributor Covenant v2.1, with one explicit additional norm: no proselytising, in any direction. Keep the work technical; keep the spirit welcoming.
The Foundation is currently a brand and a publishing umbrella, not yet a formally incorporated entity. If you're interested in helping it become one, particularly as a non-profit or charitable trust, please open a discussion.