How do we fund open source?

Foundations can also help in more indirect ways, such as through mentorship, recognition and community support, and by providing metrics that help business owners quantify the impact of projects and direct investments. “Foundations take a large share of project support beyond just funding,” says Brian Proffitt, senior manager of community outreach in the Open Source Program Office at Red Hat. “For Red Hat, supporting the many different foundations in the free and open source software ecosystem is one of the ways to ensure that as many projects as possible remain healthy and vibrant,” he says.

According to open source maintainer Seth Michael Larson, the best way to support open source is to “pay full-time staff at nonprofit foundations to work across diverse areas of the ecosystem across a broad spectrum.” This could help close the gaps in security, processes, documentation, publications and governance, he says, without removing the incentive for people to continue contributing in their free time.

However, many critical open source projects do not want to be housed in a foundation for various reasons, says Suehle. We also need to find ways to support them, she says, adding that over the years several projects have tried to address this problem, such as SustainOSS.