Even Forbes reports on it:
Here’s the original stuff:
Manjaro is taking the next step – Announcements – Manjaro Linux Forum … :
“Started as a passion project by three ambitious guys back in 2011, Manjaro has evolved rapidly to establish itself as one of the most popular and well-known Linux distributions available today. Likely one of the main reasons for its success is a unique balance between a wide variety of an ever-growing diverse community and the consistency of a small and closely connected core team. Today, many thousands of users are relying on the constancy, stability and security associated with Manjaro daily. The development and maintenance have become considerably more time consuming and a much larger task than can be managed by a few people in their spare time. For some time, Philip has been investigating ways to secure the project in its current form and how to allow for activities which can’t be undertaken as a “hobby project”, and, along with the rest of the team, a plan of action has been created.”
They seem to cooperate with Blue Systems:
“Manjaro as a company and legal entity In order to effectively engage in commercial agreements, form partnerships, and offer professional services a legal construct has been formed: Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG (wiki explanation 200). On July 8th, Philip and Bernhard met together with the CEO of Blue Systems to officially found this business entity. As a result, Bernhard and Philip will now be able to commit full-time to Manjaro, while Blue Systems will take a role as an advisor.”
“To secure the existing project funds and future donations, Jonathon is in the process of establishing the project with fiscal hosts 145 (CommunityBridge 21 and OpenCollective 28). Team members will then be able to approve the use of donations to fund project-related expenses, for example: Sponsorship for upstream events and local Manjaro team and community events; Local community costs (e.g. shipping of equipment to Manjaro team and community members); Travel (e.g. coverage of full or part of the expenses for attending an event); Hardware and hosting costs. There will be many other possibilities where community initiatives can be subsidized to help grow the Manjaro project and community.“