Funding at Scale

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 

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.