We proudly present the 
Neos Foundation CIC

The Neos Foundation is a community interest company (CIC) located in the United Kingdom.

The objects of the company are to carry on activities which benefit the community and in particular (without limitation) the Neos open source project. The Neos open source project creates open source software that can be used to develop web applications and web pages. The core products are the PHP application framework Flow and the content management system and content application platform Neos. Neos and Flow consist of further standalone components which are developed separately. These software components are provided free of charge and are publicly available for anyone.
The objectives of the company are therefor to (but not limited to):

• support the development
• marketing
• distribution; and
• maintenance of the software components developed by the Neos open source project.

A CIC is a type of company introduced by the United Kingdom government in 2005 under the Companies Act 2004, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. CICs are intended to be easy to set up, with all the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with some special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. They have proved popular and some 10,000 registered in the status's first 10 years.

The members of the Neos Foundation CIC "own" the company. Everybody who is an active member of the Neos teams is invited to become a member of the Neos Foundation CIC. The moment a Neos team member leaves the team he/she is also no longer a member of the Neos Foundation CIC. The moment he/she switches to an active team member again he/she joins again - everything works automatically. If a new member joins the Neos teams he/she is also invited to become a member of the CIC.
Since there need to be people who legally have to sign paperwork, the Neos Foundation CIC has three directors: Gina Steiner, Robert Lemke and Tobias Gruber (alphabetical order).
We understand the director as a primarily administrative role and not as a position of power. To this extend we limited the decision authority of the director role in our articles.

Brexit will have no influence on the Neos Foundation CIC since it is subject to and founded under UK law. So far all legal advice we sought on this subject has told us that these laws would not be impacted (at least in the short to mid term) by Brexit.

Of course it is not possible to know which exact effects Brexit will have and how they would impact our CIC. However, we are certain, that we will find solutions for any challenges that might arise.

You should not feel any changes in your daily work with Neos and Flow, because the CIC is an administrative body that ensures the independence of the Neos project from any particular agency. 

The founding was the first step, next we will successively move some things to the Neos Foundation CIC like e.g. the Neos funding platform or copyrights and trademarks. In addition we already work on some simple processes like budget application and travel reimbursement. But since things are already running smooth we are not in a hurry and will keep you posted.

Legal documents that are the basis of the Neos Foundation CIC are:

• Articles of Association
• Form CIC36 (Declarations on Formation of a Community Interest Company)
• Company details with UK's Companies House

As we stated above, the Neos Foundation CIC is primarily for our own administration, so any means of contact and interaction you already have stay the same. In addition, we have established the following means of contact:

• foundation (at) neos.io
• the Slack channel "#neos-foundation"