The Hydra Project was conceived and executed as a collaborative, open source effort from its very beginning in 2008.
Initially Hydra was a joint development project between Stanford University, the University of Virginia and the University of Hull in close collaboration with Fedora (now Fedora Commons, part of DuraSpace). This core group was later expanded to include MediaShelf LLC.
More recently, a number of other institutions have joined the Hydra community, either as full partners or as co-developers who will probably become partners in due course. Full partners share the aims of the original group, who now constitute a steering group within the partners, and commit to furthering the development of the project. The structure of the Hydra community is more fully described on our Governance page.
Some of the Hydra folks, “managers” and developers, who got together in San Diego December 2012 for two parallel, intensive, working meetings. This is but a representative group of the many people now working on and with Hydra.
Hydra is not (and has never been) grant funded. It is distributed, robust and open. Any single developer could walk away. Any single institution could walk away. People ask what’s your sustainability plan? We say we’ve already passed the first hurdle—more than four years of self-funded productivity, and a growing code, contributor and user base, not dependent on a transition plan. Hydra has come a long way since 2008…
The group that came together to create the Hydra Project in 2008
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