Flarum is a project owned by Toby Zerner. His first commit dates back to December 2014.
commit 74db323f83116087e773d23c3b547bc6627c1956
Author: Toby Zerner <>
Date: Sat Dec 20 16:56:46 2014 +1030
Hello world!
Toby, Franz Liedke and many contributors worked on Flarum tirelessly yet intermittently. Almost five years later Flarum is running in production for communities of different shapes and sizes and the adoption rate is only increasing. A stable release hasn't seen the light of day so far.
It was time for change. We had to battle the status quo of seeing Flarum as a hobbyist project. If we don't take this seriously, why would others? Since the beginning of this year we have been thinking, researching, networking and discussing our options. As a consequence, Toby left the team, which did take us all by surprise. Nevertheless we didn't falter in our reflection and have begun our professionalization improvements.
Yes, Flarum, as an organization, is levelling up.
A cornerstone of our future is to secure the project under a non-profit company. This would allow shared ownership of Flarum intellectual property, including the logo and copyrights. To do this properly I reached out to several people with connections or knowledge in the field of law. They all pointed me to a widely acclaimed lawyer with an expertise in internet law, Arnoud Engelfriet. I pulled a rascal move and contacted him explaining our situation. I didn't expect he would offer any immediate assistance, but to my surprise he did! He will be personally assisting the legal set up of the Flarum Foundation.
The Flarum Foundation will be formed under Dutch law with the following board members:
For simplicity sake we will stick to these three and don't have voting members. Future additions to the board and alterations to our legal representation are more than likely.
The challenge right now is to define our bylaws and push forward with transferring the project from Toby.
