GraphQL Foundation

The Linux Foundation’s fund behind GraphQL: it holds the trademark and pays for grants and GraphQLConf, while an elected steering committee runs the spec, GraphQL.js and GraphiQL.

1 projects in this catalogPart of the Linux Foundation Website

What it is

The GraphQL Foundation is part of the non-profit Linux Foundation. The LF announced it on November 6, 2018, with Airbnb, Apollo, Coursera, Elementl, Facebook, GitHub, Hasura, Prisma, Shopify and Twitter, and its charter took effect on March 12, 2019, when 16 more companies, among them AWS, IBM, Intuit and Neo4j, said they were joining. Formally it is a “directed fund”: the charter’s first line gives it the job to “raise, budget and spend funds in support of the GraphQL community”. It holds the GraphQL trademark, pays for grants to maintainers and a community manager, mentorship and legal support, and runs GraphQLConf. Its members must also be corporate members of the LF; in October 2026 the foundation’s landscape listed 13: Airbnb, Apollo, Atlassian, Elementl, Goldman Sachs, Hasura, IBM, Intuit, Meta, Platformatic, Shopify, Tyk and WunderGraph.

The technical work sits outside the fund, in two legal entities the charter names: the GraphQL Specification, a series of the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), and the GraphQL OSS Project, a series of LF Projects. GraphQL was the first LF project to use the JDF, which had joined the LF in December 2018 to give open specifications a quick path to becoming standards. The specifications (GraphQL itself, GraphQL over HTTP and GraphQL Scalars) are under the Open Web Foundation Agreement 1.0; the code, such as GraphQL.js, GraphiQL and DataLoader, is under the MIT licence. Anyone who signs the free specification membership agreement, alone or through an employer, can join the working group meetings where changes are discussed.

For someone choosing a technology, the badge covers the language and a small set of reference tools in the graphql GitHub organisation, not the ecosystem around it. Most servers and clients, including Apollo Server, graphql-java, Strawberry, Graphene, Ariadne and Hasura, are run by companies or independent communities. There are no maturity stages: a project is either in the organisation, under the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), or it isn’t. The spec is published in dated editions, most recently June 2018, October 2021 and September 2025.

Its projects in this catalog

GraphQLOpen sourceA query language and runtime for APIs: the server publishes a typed schema, and each client asks one endpoint for exactly the fields it needs.

In depth

How a change gets into the spec#

Editorial fixes are merged by a spec editor with little process. Anything that changes what the spec means goes through an RFC led by a champion, who moves it through these stages, usually at the monthly working group meetings.

Strawman

Stage 0

An issue or pull request describing a problem or a partly worked-out solution, with no entrance criteria. Its purpose is to be knocked down: by showing the problem can be solved without changing the spec, or that it goes against the guiding principles, which include backwards compatibility and “favor no change”.

Proposal

Stage 1

A pull request backed by a named champion, with a clear explanation of the problem and solution, examples, incomplete spec edits and a list of concerns and drawbacks. An RFC without a champion can’t move forward and may go stale.

Draft

Stage 2

The working group agrees this is the preferred solution, the concerns are resolved, the spec edits are precise and there is a compliant implementation in GraphQL.js, which need not be merged yet. Drafts can still change a lot, and the guide warns against relying on one in production. GraphQL over HTTP reached this stage in November 2023.

Accepted

Stage 3

An editor or the working group agrees the solution is complete, with full spec edits, prose and examples, and a fully tested GraphQL.js implementation. An editor merges it into the main branch, and it ships in the next dated edition, which only the TSC can approve.

Rejected

Stage X

An RFC can be rejected at any stage, most often as a strawman that proves unnecessary, or when a proposal or draft loses consensus or its champion. A rejected RFC is normally not reconsidered unless new evidence changes the reason for rejecting it.

Who decides#

The Governing Board runs the fund. Each of the first ten General Members appoints a representative; later General Members elect up to five more as a class; and the board also seats the Executive Director of the specification project and two community representatives. No company or group of related companies may have more than two seats. The board approves the budget, handles legal and trademark matters, and may set up a conformance programme. Its meetings are private unless it decides otherwise; since March 2025 it has published summaries of them on the GraphQL blog.

Technical decisions belong to the TSC: ten elected members plus the Executive Director, Lee Byron, GraphQL’s co-creator, as chair. Members serve two-year terms, and each year half the seats go to a vote among the members whose terms are not ending, from self-nominations open to anyone. No more than two of the elected members in October 2026 came from any one company: Meta and ChilliCream had two each, and Apollo, Graphile, Yelp, 1stDibs and The Guild one each, plus one unaffiliated member. The TSC approves spec releases, new projects and working groups and new repositories in the graphql organisation, and meets monthly at the start of the main working group meeting.

Much of the day-to-day work happens in subcommittees that report to the working group, including ones for GraphiQL, GraphQL over HTTP, composite schemas, GraphQL.js, OpenTelemetry, AI and the community. Hosted code includes GraphQL.js, GraphiQL, DataLoader, graphql-relay-js, the VS Code extension and graphql-http, which the foundation adopted in November 2022 as the reference implementation of GraphQL over HTTP, deprecating express-graphql.

Where it came from2018–2025

Facebook published the GraphQL spec and GraphQL.js in 2015, and in September 2017 relicensed them under the Open Web Foundation Agreement and MIT. The spec still lived in Facebook’s own GitHub organisation, at github.com/facebook/graphql. On November 6, 2018 the Linux Foundation announced its intent to form a GraphQL Foundation with Facebook, Apollo, GitHub, Shopify, Twitter and others; Apollo’s CEO said he looked forward to working with the LF “to define appropriate governance processes”.

The charter took effect on March 12, 2019, the day the foundation announced that the spec would be developed under the Joint Development Foundation, giving it a lightweight path to becoming a standard. The announcement named four technical projects: the spec, GraphQL.js, DataLoader and GraphiQL. In its first annual report, in April 2020, Executive Director Lee Byron said member dues had paid for long-time contributor Ivan Goncharov to work on the reference implementation and spec, and for a free edX course. The first TSC members started their terms on November 1, 2020.

Since then the foundation has spent more on people and events. It adopted graphql-http in November 2022, held its first GraphQLConf in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 19–21, 2023, and in January 2024 announced its first community grants, to Denis Badurina for graphql-http and Rikki Schulte for the GraphQL language server, while funding Benjie Gillam as community manager. The September 2025 edition was the first new spec since October 2021.

Why it’s built this way

A fund for the money, separate projects for the work: The charter splits the paying members’ Governing Board from the specification and code, which sit in their own JDF and LF Projects entities, so companies fund GraphQL without controlling what goes into it.
Standardise through the Joint Development Foundation: The JDF offered a ready-made framework for a neutral specification collaboration, so the GraphQL community could set one up quickly instead of going to a traditional standards body.
Open working group, small elected committee: Anyone who signs the free membership agreement can take part, so contributors rotate over time. The TSC keeps continuity and holds the formal votes, such as approving spec releases and electing its own members.
No spec change without an implementation: An RFC needs a compliant GraphQL.js implementation to become a draft and a fully tested one to be accepted, so the text is proven in code before it ships.

Timeline

2018
The Linux Foundation announces its intent to form the GraphQL Foundation on November 6
2019
Charter takes effect March 12; the spec moves under the Joint Development Foundation
2020
First annual report in April; first TSC members start their terms on November 1
2021
October edition of the spec
2022
graphql-http adopted as the GraphQL over HTTP reference implementation in November
2023
First GraphQLConf, September 19–21, in the San Francisco Bay Area
2024
First community grants announced in January
2025
September edition of the spec, the first since 2021

Sources · facts checked 2026-10-28

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