IronPython has been around for over 11 years. In that time there have been many changes to the team, ownership and, in some ways, the direction the project has taken. One of the biggest challenges we've had in recent time is getting people to contribute. We have a great community, with people creating issues, being willing to test out changes and so forth, but we've only had a small number of folks who have created PR's, debugged issues and helped keep the project running.

As part of an effort to increase the number of people interested in and helping out with IronPython, we submitted an application to join the .NET Foundation last year. It has taken some time to get to this point, but we're excited to announce that IronPython and the DLR will be joining the .NET Foundation!

The .NET Foundation is a great organization that really works to move the open source .NET community forward. We are very excited to be part of this amazing organization and for the help they will give us in moving IronPython and the DLR forward.

Big thanks go out to Martin Woodward (the previous Executive Director of the .NET Foundation) and Jon Galloway (the current Executive Director of the .NET Foundation) for their help in the application and acceptance process. IronPython and the DLR were a bit of a unique project having originally been under the Microsoft umbrealla, so their work in getting over many hurdles around that has been amazing and really appreciated.

What does this mean to you, the user of IronPython? We hope big things! The .NET Foundation can help us with infrastructure that we don't have access to right now (custom CI setup and so forth) and it brings along with it a stamp of approval that we hope will attract new developers and users alike.

There will be some changes required to processes going forward under the .NET Foundation, but these changes will make it easier to contribute and manage IronPython and DLR. The future is bright!