About Us
Mission and Goals
Topaz is a nonprofit organization of focused on developing open source software around collaborative creation, management and sharing of information.
Our goals are to:
- Develop software framework to allow easy and rapid development of data driven applications
- Facilitate research and collaboration of data/content models in various knowledge fields
- Enable users to develop innovative ways to explore, use and share data
What We Do
Following its founding in November 2005 by biomedical scientists Patrick O. Brown and Michael B. Eisen, Topaz first action was to help PLoS to launch their new journal PLoS ONE on an experimental version of the Topaz platform. Lesson learned from the first revision of the software allowed the team to revise the architecture completely to its current form and enabled PLoS to launch another journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and an 'overlay journal' PLoS Clinical Trials.
In 2008, Topaz released the platform to the general public under an open source license. Under this model, anyone can adopt and use the software for any purpose with no charges and restrictions. While we would prefer ideas and changes (especially bug fixes) be donated back to the project, there is no legal requirement to do so. This was a deliberate decision to make it as easy as possible for adoption and use of the technology.
Organization Status
Topaz is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3, nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. Topaz is governed by a Board of Directors chaired by PLoS co-founder Michael B. Eisen.
Topaz received a ~$2M start-up grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and has received support from the PLoS, Open Source Application Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Creative Commons, Science Commons, Fedora Commons, Mulgara, and many other foundations, universities, and other organizations and individuals.
