The gLite Open Collaboration has been established between the EGEE partners involved in the middleware activity as a new framework for the maintenance and future evolution of the gLite middleware, beyond the end of the EGEE series of projects.

Within the scope of the Collaboration are the following goals:

• maintain the gLite brand, related names and software products;
• coordinate the continued development, promotion and adoption of the integrated set of services which constitute the gLite middleware;
• provide other projects with a single interface to the gLite providers;
• coordinate the maintenance and evolution of the gLite middleware in response to requirements from its user community (such as resource providers, infrastructure operators, application developers and end-users);
• provide the gLite middleware components in an open and accessible manner to the user community; allowing and encouraging community contributions to address problems, port to new platforms, and improve the overall software quality;
• achieve interoperability with other Grid infrastructures, preferably through the adoption of established standards, such as those developed by the Open Grid Forum (OGF);
• contribute software for deployment within production infrastructures, such as via the Unified Middleware Distribution (UMD) that will be deployed by EGI;
• provide community support, for example through mailing lists, discussion forums, help, training and documentation.