They will formally announce the foundation Thursday at the OpenStack conference, being held this week in Boston.

Hosting provider Rackspace, which currently owns the OpenStack trademark and copyrights, plans to transfer ownership of these resources to the not-for-profit foundation once it is operational.

Much like how the Linux Foundation provides a supporting structure for the largely independent development of the Linux kernel, so too will the OpenStack Foundation provide the support structure for the third-party development of OpenStack, the founders said.

Thus far, the organizers haven't determined the specifics of how the foundation will be run. They will solicit feedback from users and contributors about the best model to use, said Jonathan Bryce, chairman of the OpenStack project policy board.

"The moment we decided we wanted to do it, we wanted to tell everyone. Otherwise people wouldn't feel they were involved in the decision-making process," added Mark Collier, Rackspace vice president of business development.