Take Out a CAS Supporting Subscription!

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Apereo CAS had an active and productive year in 2020. We were able to publish a couple of rich and action-packed feature releases as well as a large number of small maintenance patches and security fixes for three different versions of the CAS platform. We have had over 60 people contribute to individual feature releases of the software most of which are new contributors allowing the project to pass the 200-contributor count on GitHub, while we stand a little bit north of 8,200 bookmarks. Overall, visibility and activity are looking very good and healthy as we step into 2021.

Given increased contributor activity and the growing number of users and deployers, it is the perspective of the CAS PMC that the maintenance effort, support, development and release engineering activities cannot continue optimally based on volunteer efforts alone. To keep up with a steady stream of patches, respond to and handle security fixes and deliver enhancements,  CAS requires a consistent and sustainable source of funding to keep commitments to release and maintenance schedules. This is why we are now asking the larger majority of the user community to consider supporting and sponsoring the development effort financially via a CAS supporting subscription and Apereo Foundation membership. Many other Apereo Software Communities have taken this approach.

Supporting the CAS development effort could provide better avenues for adequate and continued support for software development activities. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Coordination of volunteer effort 
  • Maintenance and bug fixes
  • Reviewing community-submitted contributions and patches on GitHub 
  • Porting patches back and forth across supported release lines
  • Attention and time to security vulnerabilities and fixes with increased rapidity and agility. 
  • Continued commitment to a semi-official release schedule
  • Sustained effort to improve project documentation with walkthroughs, guides, etc.

At a minimum, we are seeking to raise $24,000 USD annually to address these tasks with modest paid part-time effort. The alternative risks making CAS development and upkeep less predictable and irregular.

If you are an institution which relies on a CAS deployment, we ask that you reach out to Apereo and become a supporting member. Developing CAS sustainability with a small financial contribution is both less costly and more flexible than a commercial=proprietary alternative. If you want more information on the subscription process, please reach out to the Apereo foundation via ed[at]apereo.org or the chairman of the CAS project management committee at cas-chair[at]apereo.org

We will provide a status update periodically with further developments in the CAS Supporting Subscription Program.

 

Questions? Contact Apereo Membership at membership[at]apereo[dot]org