The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) is a non-profit organization based in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the list of United States cities by population, 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester ...

. Its primary project is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, the ability to act or change without constraint or restriction * Emancipate, attaining civil and political rights or equality * Free (''gratis''), free of charge * Gratis versus libre, the difference betw ...

and

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

Internet television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as films and television show, television series, Streaming media, streamed over the Internet. Standing in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by Broadc ...

platform called Miro, formerly called the Democracy player. It is also the developer of Broadcast Machine, an open-source video publishing tool. A

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...

organization, the PCF's mission is to "develop technology and services that ensure everyone has access to all that the Internet has to offer", because "information is critical to building a more equitable and peaceful society".

History

The organization was founded in February 2005. The Downhill Battle project precedes PCF. PCF has received financial support from Andy and Deborah Rappaport and

Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus Software, Lotus, where he was instr ...

. It has also received support from the Surdna Foundation, Knight Foundation, and other private donors. As of 2006, Nicholas Reville was a co-director of PCF. That year, PCF led a workshop at

YearlyKos Netroots Nation is a political convention for American progressive political activists. Originally organized by readers and writers of Daily Kos, a liberal political blog, it was originally called YearlyKos and rebranded as Netroots Nation ...

on how individual citizens can make professional-quality political ad videos and distribute them over the Internet. On May 29, 2007, the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

announced that it had awarded PCF a grant to continue their work on its open-source video projects.

Projects

* ''Miro'' – a free/open-source broadcatching software application which allows subscribing to

web feed On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the fee ...

s of downloadable audio and video ** ''Miro Guide'' – a web-based directory of audio and video web feeds, integrated by default into the application * ''Miro Community'' – a free web hosting service for user-submitted video; hosts mostly

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

-formatted video in HTML5-compatible web browsers * ''Broadcast Machine'' – a desktop application allowing easy publishing of video files and updated internet television channels * '' Amara'' (formerly Universal Subtitles) – enables collaboration on captions and subtitles * ''The Channel Channel'' – a project to provide one-minute previews of internet channels; last updated in January 2007 * ''Video Bomb'' – a

folksonomy Folksonomy is a classification system in which end users apply public tags to online items, typically to make those items easier for themselves or others to find later. Over time, this can give rise to a classification system based on those tag ...

-driven video directory * ''Miro Video Converter'' – an application to convert any video to

MP4 MP4 (formally MPEG-4 Part 14), is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, it allows ...

or formats compatible with Android,

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

(

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

), and

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PA ...

devices

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://pculture.org/
PCF at National Center for Charitable Statistics
Charities based in Massachusetts Organizations established in 2005 Organizations based in Worcester, Massachusetts Free and open-source software organizations 2005 establishments in Massachusetts Participatory democracy

History

Projects

See also

References

External links