December Update for OSC
Published on January 16, 2026 by Grace
📣 Announcements 📣
Wise Integration is Back to Normal
Thank you so much for your patience while we worked through the Wise interruption. During a routine KYC review with Wise, the Wise and Open Collective integration unexpectedly broke and took longer than anticipated to reconnect. The good news: Wise resolved their issue, and everything is back to normal. We really appreciate your understanding during the downtime, and we’re glad to be back to normal operations.
Reducing Payment Processor Fees for Your Collective
Reducing Payment Processor Fees for Your Collective
While the connection was down, our team processed expenses manually, bringing us closer to the process and the costs involved. As a result, we will be working on a guide to keep the cost of paying expenses lower for you and your Collectives. Here are two of the most common examples we have found:
- If a payee lives outside of the U.S., Wise fees are often lower when the payee’s receiving currency matches their local currency rather than USD. For example, if your bank is in Germany and you set your receiving currency to EUR, the fees will be lower than if you receive USD.
- For payees outside the U.S. who might receive and have the need to make recurring payments to US companies (rather than a one-off payment), opening a Wise or Payoneer account to accept USD can result in even lower fees – sometimes none at all.
Of course, it’s worth noting that fees change from time to time, but we’ll keep an eye on ways we can keep those costs as low as possible.
Board update: Thank you Pia
After nearly a decade as President of Open Source Collective, Pia Mancini has handed over the reins to Benjamin Nickolls. Our Executive Director, Lauren Gardner will take on Ben’s role as Treasurer.
Pia founded both Open Collective Inc. and Open Source Collective in 2015 and 2017, respectively. During that time, Open Collective has helped projects raise over $100m across open source, education, mutual aid, climate, and arts and culture. Not one to relax, Pia’s already pursuing her next venture in women’s health. We wish her all the best and are immensely thankful for her dedication and sacrifices over the years.
Goodbye 2025
We’re celebrating another record year for our member projects, who collectively paid maintainers over US$10m in 2025! We processed 7,236 expenses, reimbursing over 1,600 of you for your costs and your time.
We’ll be sharing a end of the year round-up alongside our plans for 2026 in the coming weeks. Until then, we’d just like to thank all our member projects, maintainers, and donors for their amazing work and continued support.
FOSDEM 2026
FOSDEM is approaching (January 31st in Brussels), and we know many of you will be there. The OSC team will be attending as well, and we’d love to connect in person (and we can also give you some free Google Titan Keys there, just let us know in advance)
We’re planning an OSC meetup and have put together a short interest form to gauge interest and get a rough headcount. If you’ll be in Brussels during or around FOSDEM and might be interested in joining, please fill out this 4-question form so we can share the details with you once the plans are finalized: https://oscollective.fillout.com/t/6k97LfM55Lus
If you’ll be giving a talk, hosting a session, or tabling at FOSDEM, please let us know below as well!
FossBackstage 2026
Foss Backstage is also coming up (March 16th in Berlin). OSC is once again a sponsor and will have a table at the conference. We’re also planning to host an OSC meetup around FOSS Backstage and will share an interest form for that in next month’s update.
Several folks from our community will be speaking as well:
- Benjam (OSC and Ecosystems) and Andrew (Ecosystems): Is Innersoure Commons good for open source?
- Shannon (OfiCo): How Open Collective moved from a for-profit to a nonprofit
If you’ll be attending, be sure to stop by the OSC table and stay tuned for meetup details.
Recap of OSC Wishlist Spotlight
In December, we hosted Emma Irwin and Ruth Ikegah from the Open Source Wishlist project to introduce us to their initiative.
Open Source Wishlist provides a standardized way for maintainers to express their community infrastructure needs alongside a growing catalogue of experts or practitioners who are open to offering services.
Right now, the Open Source Wishlist team is working to collect 200 project wishlists by the first week of February. If your project could use help strengthening its community infrastructure through funding strategies, community governance, moderation strategies, and AI-related decisions, this is a great opportunity to get that help.
Watch the recording here: https://youtu.be/V0xDoKEOn0k
Learn more about Open Source Wishlist here: https://oss-wishlist.com/
Join GSoC as a Mentoring Organization
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) mentoring organization applications open January 19, 2026, and close February 3, 2026.
If your project is thinking about participating this year, now is the time to start preparing. Each year, GSoC accepts roughly 30 new mentoring organizations, and we love to see OSC-hosted projects amongst them.
If you’re interested in applying, we recommend reviewing the GSoC materials early here: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/12/shape-future-with-google-summer-of-code.html
✨Community Highlights, Updates, and Announcements ✨
In December, we welcomed 20 new projects: AgOpenGPS, Avatune, Copier, Django Commons, ElementaryUI, Flint, Geektime Docs, HytaleModding, KanaDojo, Laravel Admin, Maintainerr, Mybatis PageHelper, Nekogram, orval, pkgconf, rep+, Revel, uDevices, V, and WGDashboard!
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Thanks for the detailed update and for handling the Wise issue so transparently, glad to hear everything is back to normal.
The fee-reduction tips are super useful for maintainers, and big thanks to Pia for her years of leadership. Congrats to the team on another amazing year supporting open source, and best of luck to everyone attending FOSDEM and FOSS Backstage!
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