Open Collective
Open Collective
Loading

Funding at Scale has been archived.

Funding at Scale has been archived and is no longer active.

Funding at Scale

PROJECT

OSC would like to better understand the mechanics involved in funding open source at scale.

Budget


Transparent and open finances.

-$1,723.40USD
Completed
Balance transfer

Funding at Scale

from forCrowd to Funding at Scale
-€4,080.00 EUR
$4,341.58 USD
Paid
Invoice #161703
contractor

Funding at Scale

from forCrowd to Funding at Scale
-€5,440.00 EUR
$5,890.95 USD
Paid
Invoice #156281
$
Today’s balance

--.-- USD

Total raised

$15,000.00 USD

Total disbursed

$15,000.00 USD

Estimated annual budget

--.-- USD

About


We note that while many sustainability initiatives exist for open source and open source maintainers, their scale usually results in a competitive marketplace in which the larger, more gregarious projects absorb 80% of the funding while the projects at the core receive little, despite the larger projects themselves depending upon them. 

The incentives at play here are obvious and understandable. No one shifts the needle on a project with a $2/month donation, nor do companies get the benefits that they would like to receive (prestige, developer eyeballs, developer retention and improved hiring success rates) from such small, diffuse gifts. 

Neither do we see anyone committing significant funds into researching funding open source at scale. We see research like this as a necessary precursor to organisations like the Sovereign Tech Fund and CISA recommending that governments invest not millions but billions into the support of open source and open source maintainers. 

OSC is willing to fund exploratory work that will 
  • Develop a costed proposal for funding opportunities like the Digital Infrastructure Fund
  • Develop and document a set of considerations when selecting projects to support and financial goals for those projects i.e. ‘full time employment for a FTE maintainer’ over ‘core operational costs and infrastructure support’
  • Develop and test, at scale a set of algorithms and approaches to distribute significant funds across a networked graph of open source software and their interdependent projects, to achieve these goals

OSC is willing to provide access and support to data from Ecosyste.ms to facilitate this work. 

We would like to receive a proposal, with a plan to deliver a proposal, with some interim results by mid-August 2023. 

Our team

Justin Dorfman

Core Contributor

Benjamin Nick...

Admin
Executive Director

Sourav Das

Admin
Operations @ OSC

Samson Goddy

Core Contributor

Lauren Gardner

Admin
Executive Director

Martin Wright

Core Contributor

Contributors


Funding at Scale is all of us

Our contributors 1

Thank you for supporting Funding at Scale.

Open Source C...

$15,000 USD