EDSP

Policy and Aims

The Green Software Foundation’s Manifesto is the public facing declaration of the policy and aims of the Foundation. It describes the set of core values of the Foundation and how we operationalise those values. It is used to both inform and guide the decisions and behaviours of the people inside the Foundation and signal to external stakeholders what's important to the Foundation.

Mission

Build a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices for creating and building green software.

Vision

Change the culture of building software across the tech industry, so sustainability becomes a core priority to software teams, just as important as performance, security, cost and accessibility.

Minimise Carbon

The Foundation's mission is to reduce the total change in global carbon emissions associated with software. When evaluating choices we choose the option that advocates for abatement (reducing emissions) not neutralisation (offsetting emissions).

Operationalise:
We will consider how to minimise carbon emissions in every decision we make around how we conduct ourselves operationally and the standards and technology we create and use.

Maximise Trust

If there is no trust in the Foundation's output, it won't have the influence needed and will fail its core mission. When evaluating choices we choose the option that increases trust in the Foundation.

Operationalise:

• We will have a diverse mix of organisations, for profits, non-profits, government, and academia.
• Unless there is a good reason to maintain privacy, all documentation, threads, and processes will be open and transparent.

Engage with empathy

Ensuring that all of our members and contributors feel that they can actively contribute will ensure that we create an environment that promotes belonging and will lead to better outcomes.

Operationalise:

• We will endeavour to listen actively before we respond, to recognize when other group members are not participating, and make space for them to engage.
• We will acknowledge that everyone is at a different stage on their climate journey and we will work to help our peers advance in their understanding and impact aligned with the mission of the Foundation.
• We will commit to providing direct, constructive feedback to our colleagues in our work to achieve the mission of the Green Software Foundation

Be inclusive and open to all

Achieving the mission of the Green Software Foundation requires us to act with fairness to all members and be inclusive of diverse perspectives. Operationalise:

• We will ensure digital accessibility throughout our organizational processes, communications channels, standard development, and code.
• Our working groups and steering committee will work via consensus. If we fail to reach a consensus on issues, then there is a vote. The organization's size does not matter. Each general and steering member organization has one vote each.
• Our steering committee will review any requests for resources that, on balance, benefit some member organizations over others.
  We will follow the Linux Foundation anti-trust policy.

Hold ourselves accountable

Accountability builds trust and ensures that all members, stakeholders, and contributors feel that the Green Software Foundation is a community where we uphold our values and ensure safety, professionalism, and inclusion.Operationalise:

• We will always assume our colleagues are operating with the best intentions and working towards the Green Software Foundation mission.
• In the case that a member or contributors of the Green Software Foundation is engaging in any behaviors that are in conflict with our core values, reports can be made to Asim Hussain, Chairperson, asim@greensoftware.foundation.

What is Green Software?

There are two broad ways of looking at software: software as part of the climate problem and software as part of the climate solution. Building green software, and doing it to scale requires the creation of a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices. The mission of Green Software Foundation is exactly that.

Carbon
We want software to become part of the climate solution, rather than be part of the climate problem. This is why we are focusing on reducing the negative impacts of software on our climate by reducing the carbon emissions that software is responsible for emitting.

Software can also be an enabler of climate solutions. Software can be built to help accelerate decarbonization across all sectors in industry and society. We need people and organizations to focus on both aspects: of making green software and green-enabling software. But our primary focus is on creating an ecosystem for developing green software.

The Green Software Foundation is a non-profit and has been created for the people who are in the business of building software. We are tasked with giving them answers about what they can do to reduce the software emissions they are responsible for.

Reduction
Our focus is reduction, not neutralization. One gram of carbon not emitted into our atmosphere is not the same as one gram of carbon that has been offset. By far the more preferable goal is to never have emitted the carbon in the first place.

Reduction is more challenging than offsetting. It entails more risk and more investment. To mitigate that risk and incentive investment into reduction, we need to grow an ecosystem of people, standards, tooling, and best practices for the reduction of carbon emissions of software. The Foundation's mission is to nurture that ecosystem.

Action
Our view is that there are only three actions that reduce the carbon emissions of software:

• Using less physical resources
• Using less energy
• Using energy more intelligently

Using energy more intelligently means either consuming lower-carbon sources of energy or consuming electricity in a way that helps accelerate the energy transition towards a low carbon future.

Everything that you can do that reduces the carbon emissions of software falls into one or more of the above categories. The Foundation's mission is to encourage more of these actions to be taken across the software industry.

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