About us

A cooperative effort amongst like-minded organizations.

Who we are

A team of passionate software engineers

PRAGMA is a member-based, not-for-profit Open Source Association for blockchain software projects. It aims to foster an alternative open-source ecosystem for Cardano and beyond. We are a team of passionate software engineers from various backgrounds who build open-source tools for developers aiming for mass adoption.

PRAGMA focuses on delivering perennial open-source software for the public good. It is a cooperative effort among organisations with a similar outlook and mindset regarding Open Source and the blockchain industry. Each of its founding members is an entity deeply focused on IT development and engineering in the Cardano ecosystem.

PRAGMA provides a space of common practices and high-quality standards, strongly focused on developer experience. It is an invitation to developers who fancy building in the open as well as collaborating to reconcile adoption and software excellence. In the long run, we hope it can become a home to any blockchain-related open-source projects that seek collective ownership.

Our goals

PRAGMA develops high-quality software that serve the public good and are freely available, emphasizing accessibility, inclusivity, and societal impact.

We build enduring and impactful projects designed for long-term sustainability, ensuring that contributions have a lasting positive effect on open-source communities.
PRAGMA fosters collaborative innovation and transparency by establishing an open-source ecosystem for blockchain software projects, promoting community-driven development and shared expertise.

We want to give an opportunity for anyone to contribute to the development of key projects in Cardano and beyond.
PRAGMA is about democratising software development for the Cardano ecosystem and, in the long run, in blockchain as a whole, using proven open-source methodologies. We want anyone to have the opportunity to contribute to the development of key projects in Cardano — and beyond.

PRAGMA aims to consolidate forces and propose a model of operations that others may choose to follow.

Our principles

Simplicity, transparency and efficiency.

We want to build software solutions that increase blockchain’s utility and adoption, inasmuch as they also provide business value for ecosystem actors. We look to set an example for a decentralised and transparent organisation dedicated to developing blockchain software ecosystems, starting with Cardano. We aim to deliver solutions in small visible steps and build a structure to help support and incubate other projects in the long run.

We believe that an open-source alliance between multiple dedicated actors is necessary to carry this mission. An endeavour of that magnitude, maintained through the years, is only possible via an effective and collective open-source strategy. PRAGMA materialises a common vision between amicable and like-minded organisations who have already been successfully working together on many occasions.

We will...

Provide a safe home and governance framework for open source projects in the blockchain space.
Be run collaboratively by members from multiple horizons, in a decentralized fashion.
Support operationally independent maintainer committees through services, in particular:
- Intellectual property advice, registrations, and enforcement;
- Backend infrastructure (e.g., email, GitHub, etc.);
- Training, education, and workshops;
- Visibility, branding, and networking.
Be funded by membership fees and contributions.
Provide corporate housekeeping, intellectual property, and finance support for its own activities.

We will NOT...

receive, administer or deploy funding from members or third parties for projects.
provide direct funding to maintainer committees, maintainer committee members or contributors.

While the above means that projects will need to look for other sources of resourcing , we believe it is paramount for the long-term success of the association as it will significantly de-risk, simplify and lower the costs of operation and make membership and contributions by members to the association more attractive. Most importantly, this separation will keep the association focused on long-term development related activities and goals.

Structure

A multi-headed association, with members operating in full-consensus.

In its initial phase, PRAGMA is setup as a multi-headed association where each member has a voice. The founding members constitutes the General Assembly and have ultimate authority on the strategy and functioning of the association.

The General Assembly operates through the means of an Administrative Board who is effectively running the operations. A crucial mission of the board is to decide on projects and appoints Maintainer Committees to them. The committees are small group of skilled software engineers in charge of developing and managing projects in collaboration with their respective open-source communities.

Each project is supervised by a Maintainer Committee, who is both responsible for the core development but also for managing contributions. It is in touch with the project’s community, and can onboard motivated contributors when necessary.

The Maintainer Committees are self-organising in ways that may differ from a project to another, for every project is different. While all strongly committed to the PRAGMA’s principles, they may freely chose tools and processes that better serves the project.