Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

endowment.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 176 posts

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

#111

Post by svilen_dobrev »

kvinogradov wrote: post #66
alexchamberlain wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Government support won't work for OSS at scale — it's too globally decentralized... We recently received US 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity status. If this is successful in the first iteration, I'd love to see a UK and EU based charities too. That would allow european donors to support on a gross pay basis, and may simplify grants to european nationals too. (I'm sure similar things apply in other jurisdictions too.)

OSE actually has it on its roadmap: https://github.com/osendowment/foundation/blob/main/roadmap.... Most likely we won't create our own subsidiaries, but will partner with local nonprofits (suggestions are welcome), which could make donations tax-deductible for UK/EU residents. As for grants, we are totally fine with supporting European open source maintainers now. OSE has a global scope, limited only by the availabl…

> will partner with local nonprofits

mmh. be very careful when choosing those. Esp. in former socialistic countries, and esp. in some of them (hint), where $$$ scheming has become bread-and-butter of the.. kind-of-former-but-new aparatchiks.. it's like an official mafia. Electrically speaking, they manage to find ways to ground and leech on any potential.. $100 or $100M alike.

otherwise - great initiative. The Commons (as of ivan ilich) need support and care in order to be .. there when needed.

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

#112

Post by numbsafari »

EarlKing wrote: post #102
numbsafari wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The goal of this "faculty" would be sustainable OSS maintenance (which involves both leadership and contribution), rather than publishing research and teaching classes.

OSS isn't commercial, per se.

Universities "ship" plenty of "products":

https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/services/hubzero

https://www.scala-lang.org/scala-core/

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

#113

Post by kvinogradov »

nightpool wrote: post #76
shimman wrote: post #62

Highly skeptical of undemocratic organizations whose founder immediately talks dismissively of government programs. Comments from OP aren't helping either. Just another Silicon Valley bro that wants to be in-charge of something with zero democratic control. Very typical in the current environment, which is why it should be soundly rejected.

What government programs in the US are stably funding open-source developers? I think most government-funded open source projects are very gunshy about looking for new funding because of the Trump administration completely politicizing grants and funding. I would not want to have to sign an anti-BDS pledge to get my open source project funded, and I would imagine that goes for many people in the community. Also, what…

Exactly! A few more considerations on gov support of OSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47171562

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

#116

Post by antonvs »

shimman wrote: post #60
mentalgear wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would very much make sense and generate direct real world products. However, I fear academia is in itself a very competitive space for resources that doesn't necessarily want to open up for outsiders.

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.

Your first sentence and second sentence don't reconcile in practice.

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

#117

Post by whit537 »

nwellnhof wrote: post #104
whit537 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Thanks, captured here: https://github.com/osendowment/endowment.dev/issues/34#issue...

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

#118

Post by whit537 »

tristor wrote: post #103

I like the concept, I cannot donate today but I intend to do so in the future. I would definitely like to understand more about the distribution model, however.

Some day. :)

You can follow along w/ model development in this repo:

https://github.com/osendowment/model

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

#120

Post by kvinogradov »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #111
kvinogradov wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSE actually has it on its roadmap: https://github.com/osendowment/foundation/blob/main/roadmap.... Most likely we won't create our own subsidiaries, but will partner with local nonprofits (suggestions are welcome), which could make donations tax-deductible for UK/EU residents. As for grants, we are totally fine with supporting European open source maintainers now. OSE has a global scope, limited only by the availabl…

> will partner with local nonprofits mmh. be very careful when choosing those. Esp. in former socialistic countries, and esp. in some of them (hint), where $$$ scheming has become bread-and-butter of the.. kind-of-former-but-new aparatchiks.. it's like an official mafia. Electrically speaking, they manage to find ways to ground and leech on any potential.. $100 or $100M alike. otherwise - great initiative. The Common…

Sure - we donate our own money to this endowment fund and carefully choose partners who have a solid reputation and can deliver maximum efficiency. I don't think we will have any of them in former socialist countries,except for those based in Berlin :)
Post reply on HN