Add Foundation update blog post (#940)

* Add Foundation update blog post

Announce the policies and procedures and provide short updates on other topics of interest

* Apply suggestions from code review

Co-authored-by: Hugo Locurcio <[email protected]>

* Update collections/_article/godot-foundation-update-sep-2024.md

Co-authored-by: Hana - Piralein <[email protected]>

* Update for December and clean up some language

* Update cover image and small updates

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Co-authored-by: Hugo Locurcio <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Emi <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Hana - Piralein <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Emi <[email protected]>

collections/_article/godot-foundation-update-dec-2024.md

@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+---
+title: "Godot Foundation Update December 2024"
+excerpt: "We’ve made progress on several key initiatives for the organization and the Godot ecosystem. Here’s what we’ve been up to."
+categories: ["news"]
+author: Godot Foundation
+image: /storage/blog/covers/godot-foundation-update-2024.webp
+date: 2024-12-02 17:00:00
+---
+
+The Foundation has been working on a number of things behind the scenes that are important for the organization and for
+the Godot ecosystem more broadly. We wanted to take the chance to highlight a few of them in this post.
+
+## Key policies and procedures
+The Foundation was formed in August 2022, but we only began operating in a full capacity in July 2023. We initially
+adopted the [member project policies](https://sfconservancy.org/projects/policies/) of the Software Freedom Conservancy.
+Doing so allowed us to operate exactly as we had when we were a member project of the SFC, and maintain very high
+standards.
+
+In September, we adopted a modified version of those policies that is more specific to our organization. You can read the
+updated version on the [Godot Foundation website](https://godot.foundation/policies-and-procedures/key-policies).
+
+We are very happy with the policies and we hope you are too. They hold us to a very high standard and ensure that the
+Foundation will always operate in a way that supports Godot.
+
+## Contractors
+The Foundation currently has 10 contractors working on the engine directly (6 full time, 4 part time) and 3 contractors
+working on administration and infrastructure.
+
+This is the most number of contractors we have had at once, and even so, we feel understaffed as there is always more
+work that needs to be done than we can do. Accordingly, we would like to continue hiring once funding allows for it.
+
+## Upcoming projects
+The Foundation is working on 4 major projects in addition to working on Godot itself:
+1. An official asset store
+2. An official job board on the Godot website
+3. A public project priorities page
+4. A public trademark policy
+
+### Asset store
+We have been working towards an initial version of the asset store for a while now. It has taken us some time to get the legal aspects into place and a design agreed upon. 
+
+We expect to have an early access version of the site up and running this month and we will begin inviting testers to help us polish it and get it ready for a full release sometime in 2025.
+
+### Job board
+We aim to have a place for people to post that are looking to hire Godot developers to add to their game team or Godot
+contributors to fix high priority bugs that may be impacting your team.
+
+In addition to a job board, we will be curating a list of service providers who have shown that they offer services in
+the Godot ecosystem to make it easy to find someone to contract with if you need support or any other services.
+
+Much of the foundational work for this has been finished, but it will likely be released after the asset store so we can
+focus our efforts more on that first. 
+
+### Project priorities
+Soon we will be adding a project priorities page to our website to give the community more clarity on the direction of
+development.
+
+We have avoided providing a roadmap as we don’t want to promise more than we can deliver, or put too much pressure on
+volunteer contributors. However, the Godot Project maintainers have agreed that it is time to at least write down what
+the largest tasks are that we are working towards. This won’t be like a traditional roadmap where we have specific tasks
+with expected dates. However, we believe it will answer a lot of questions that the community has about the future of
+the project.
+
+### Trademark policy
+We registered the Godot trademark and the Godot logo trademark while still a member project of the SFC. Last year, the
+SFC granted the Godot Foundation ownership over the trademarks. Now we need to have a public policy that says how and
+when others can use the trademarks to protect them.
+
+We are working with our lawyers to craft a policy that is fair to existing users, as permissive as possible, and still
+able to protect our trademark.
+
+We will have a blog post soon with more information.
+
+## The Foundation's role in the project
+
+We also wanted to take this chance to muse about the Foundation's role in the project. In particular, we want to
+contrast the size of the Foundation with the size of the Godot project contributor pool. As explained above, the
+Foundation currently hires 13 contractors to work on Godot, while the total number of contributors to Godot is over
+2,500 (the 4.3 release alone had over 500 contributors)! This large group of contributors is the reason why Godot is
+able to improve so quickly and do so much for a fraction of the funding that the other large engines have.
+
+The Foundation (meaning the Board of Directors and the people hired by the Foundation) does not determine the priorities
+of the project in a top-down way. In other words, the Foundation does not dictate to individual volunteers what they
+should work on. Instead, it influences the project implicitly by making hiring decisions and hiring people for specific
+tasks that aren’t being done by the community.
+
+Ultimately, it is the Godot community that deserves the most credit for the growth and development of Godot. While we
+hope to see the Foundation grow and take on a stronger role in the project, it should be seen as a central pillar of the
+project that volunteers can rally around. Donating to the Foundation is one avenue to contribute, but there are many
+more and Godot needs contribution in all areas in order to continue growing at this pace. Please consider contributing
+however you are able!
+
+## Support
+
+Godot is a non-profit, open source game engine developed by hundreds of contributors in their free time, as well as a handful of part or full-time developers hired thanks to [generous donations from the Godot community](https://fund.godotengine.org/). A big thank you to everyone who has contributed [their time](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/AUTHORS.md) or [their financial support](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/DONORS.md) to the project!
+
+If you'd like to support the project financially and help us secure our future hires, you can do so using the [Godot Development Fund](https://fund.godotengine.org/) platform managed by [Godot Foundation](https://godot.foundation/). There are also several [alternative ways to donate](/donate) which you may find more suitable.