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Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

endowment.dev

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Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#101

Post by EarlKing »

whit537 wrote: post #78
EarlKing wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.... you just created a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization to offer grants for product development. Yeah, this will end well.

Here are a couple salient portions of our IRS application to put your mind at ease. :^) > In limited circumstances, the Foundation may make grants to organizations that are not described in IRC Section 501(c)(3), or to individual OSS developers, maintainers, researchers, and educators. These grants will support persons and organizations engaged in developing, maintaining, securing, documenting, or conducting research…

Boldly asserting that all grants will be made exclusively for charitable or educational purposes does nothing to change the character of the grant. If you're giving money to someone for commercial product development then you're giving money to someone for commercial product development ... and if that constitutes the majority of what you do then you've got a major problem.

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#102

Post by EarlKing »

numbsafari wrote: post #93
EarlKing wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, speaking in the case of the US, this would constitute product development which is well outside the scope of what a 501(c)(3) organization should be doing, which could thereby jeopardize their tax status? Or, in the case of a state-run university, this raises all kinds of issues regarding how tax money is being given away to random schmoes instead of benefitting the public at large. So, yeah, there's plenty of…

Using the model of the university and various tenured profs, I'm not sure what you are saying is true. But, perhaps it's a misunderstanding of what I was intending. I see this more as a way to answer the question of things like the maintainers of OpenSSL or sudo. One approach is to fund the "project" and let it deal with all of these questions. Another approach would be to fund the people themselves. So, have a facul…

> Using the model of the university and various tenured profs, I'm not sure what you are saying is true. But, perhaps it's a misunderstanding of what I was intending.

Tenured professors are not engaged in commercial product development.

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#104

Post by nwellnhof »

whit537 wrote: post #67
nwellnhof wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any project important enough to matter will have at least a GitHub mirror That might be true, but many of the mirrors are unofficial.

Noted in the abstract, thanks. Concrete examples more useful ofc.

Concrete examples: GNU software, musl C library, everything from x.org and freedesktop.org. Just have a look at the top 1,000 projects from the Debian popularity contest and you'll find many projects outside the Github bubble. Why not use the Debian package name in your nomination form instead of a Github URL? Any project important enough to matter will have a Debian package, right?

If you're trying to come up with something like the "criticality score" based on repo metadata like the OpenSSF, you're likely to fail just like they did. Starting with Debian's popcon data makes a lot more sense, in my opinion.

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#105

Post by shimman »

philipallstar wrote: post #70
shimman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well universities have no qualms about making private relationships to help subsidize private research. Let's not worry about problems that don't exist or are trivially solved.

Can you give an example of what you mean?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/06/academi...

https://archive.ph/0MzkZ

https://www.wired.com/story/top-ai-researchers-financial-bac...

I live in Cambridge, MA there are dozens of these relationships going on; big tech offers lucrative access to cutting edge hardware in return for closed research.

Just more insidious ways on how big tech requires massive amounts of welfare to exist and persist.

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#106

Post by kvinogradov »

trueismywork wrote: post #88

The need to create this is the failure of tax based revenue model of the govt

It is great to see that governments are also funding open source, but I don't think it is sustainable and scalable because:

1) In every country, most politicians and citizens have no clue about the problem we are discussing here. Thus OSS won't have a meaningful share in the gov budget.

2) If an OSS-advanced country funds open source now (like Germany - kudos to them!), it might easily change later with a new administration (like the support of nuclear plants in Germany).

3) If a very stable OSS-advanced country perpetually support open source, that creates a freerider problem - nowadays it seems that German taxpayers are supporting OSS, but others do not and unlikely will.

Meanwhile, private funding is sustainable (endowment model) and scalable because of aligned incentives — people voluntarily join, not taxed.

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#108

Post by kvinogradov »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #98
kvinogradov wrote: post #2

Over the last few years I've talked with hundreds of people in the dev community, and almost everyone shared the same concern: there's no sustainable funding for critical OSS maintenance, and without it the modern world runs on an increasingly fragile foundation. I have personal experience with university endowments, and at some point noticed that the open source world is remarkably similar to a top research universi…

Just for the love of all things, do not let this become like Wikipedia or Mozilla. The moment you start paying for irrelevant things, you lose donors current and in the future. Nothing more frustrating than those two orgs in terms of where they spend their donor funds.

I am one of https://wikimediaendowment.org/benefactors (donated years ago), and now I am totally unhappy with what is happening with Wikipedia. It has been an important lesson learned.

To keep a nonprofit efficient and impactful, it is crucial for its governance to have skin in the game; otherwise, there will be no long-term alignment of interests. More details on why and how we implement this at the Open Source Endowment: https://kvinogradov.com/osendowment

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#109

Post by kvinogradov »

EarlKing wrote: post #101
whit537 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a couple salient portions of our IRS application to put your mind at ease. :^) > In limited circumstances, the Foundation may make grants to organizations that are not described in IRC Section 501(c)(3), or to individual OSS developers, maintainers, researchers, and educators. These grants will support persons and organizations engaged in developing, maintaining, securing, documenting, or conducting research…

Boldly asserting that all grants will be made exclusively for charitable or educational purposes does nothing to change the character of the grant. If you're giving money to someone for commercial product development then you're giving money to someone for commercial product development ... and if that constitutes the majority of what you do then you've got a major problem.

OSE won't give money for commercial product development - it is dedicated to supporting existing highly-used _nonprofit_ and independent OSS. Some specific examples are at https://endowment.dev/faq/#grants

Re: Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

#110

Post by kvinogradov »

verdverm wrote: post #95
whit537 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "pay operating costs" is one place non-profits often find fraud. If you find it here please let us know.

Can you explain the 2-3% gap between expected returns and outlays? Seems like a lot more than what is needed for accounting (based on the other main person here posting)

The explanation is simple — nobody can predict exact annual returns, and they tend to fluctuate. We aim to spend at least 5% per year on OSS grants and need to decide if we can spend more on them or should reinvest based on specific annual results. And target earnings should overcome inflation.
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