Does your company existentally depend on Open Source? (Almost certainly yes.) But, you aren't funding any of it? (Likely not.) Does this make you nervous? (It should.) Here are smart thoughts on how: https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/how-to-help-open-source/ - ThreadSky

timbray.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy • 11 days ago

Does your company existentally depend on Open Source? (Almost certainly yes.)
But, you aren't funding any of it? (Likely not.)
Does this make you nervous? (It should.)

Here are smart thoughts on how: https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/how-to-help-open-source/

Comments

michaeljaylissner.com•10 days ago

As a decision maker and FOSS contributor, the thing I struggle with is how to figure out and fund the hundreds of packages we rely on in any kind of fair way.

xwikisas.bsky.social•8 days ago

You can donate, pay for custom feature, get support packages where available. There are ways!
We actually have a FOSS Fund that we also use to support other open-source solutions we use internally.

michaeljaylissner.com•8 days ago

Yeah. The problem is we rely on dozens of packages, some are well funded, others are huge and broke, etc. Feels daunting to try to figure out how to give money to what.

xwikisas.bsky.social•7 days ago

Here's more about our FOSS fund and how we decide to support: https://xwiki.com/en/company/funding-foss/

erik-mols.bsky.social•8 days ago

We support many open source projects. Our group of companies are mayor financial sponsors for Ubuntu Touch and OCA, to name some.

xwikisas.bsky.social•8 days ago

Congrats for the initiative!

michaelwarkentin.com•10 days ago

Join the open source pledge: https://opensourcepledge.com/

LawmanLungis.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy•11 days ago

@timbray Sigh. This.

The number of times I have tried to get management to at least donate *something* to the FOSS tools we rely on.

But no. Management does what management does best (being ignorant assholes).

gray17.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy•10 days ago

@timbray I remember reading somewhere that it's generally easier to get companies to contribute money if you can invoice them somehow. I don't remember specifically how open-source projects can produce invoices sensibly

xwikisas.bsky.social•8 days ago

We are building open-source but also have revenue as we are an SAS that are offering additional services like custom features, support, consultancy. So, building ethical open-source solutions while actually also being able to earn revenue is doable.

cpswan.net•11 days ago

Much of "What state does the project need to be in to be considered healthy?" is covered off in OpenSSF best practices/scorecard.

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