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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

#21

Post by hedora »

briffle wrote: post #18
nwellnhof wrote: post #16

Do I get this right that you can only nominate projects on Github? It should be known by now that a centralized platform like Github is the complete antithesis to open source.

So what is your proposed solution?

Not the person you replied to, but I imagine less gameable signals than stars would make sense. Download count, default installs in multiple distros, industrial use cases in the cloud all come to mind.

Maybe giving money to the endowment gives you a vote? (Kills two birds with one stone.)

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

#22

Post by mannanj »

tabbott wrote: post #19

It's an interesting idea. The current endowment size of less than $1M is immaterial; the question with a project like this will always be how it is able to raise capital. A way something like this could be interesting is if founders started donating 5% of equity when they started a company to an open source foundation like this one. It doesn't impact the founder much financially: Success is very binary for founders.…

I'm not an expert here on equity, 5% feels a bit high. I like the idea - even 1% would be significant. In general, could we start to hold accountable and start using public status and tracking of organizational commitment to the open source software they use and make profit off of - that might help a lot as well.

We in general are too naive and fail to hold accountable others and ourselves from contributing back when we use resources from the common public. Open source is like imo the common welfare/public resource. If others are abusing it, its time to call them out for what they are really doing: framing, abusing and stealing from the public and maybe we need to be more serious about this and change the public access (maybe hybrid-open source for companies who use OS software) and create systems to legally enforce these.

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

#23

Post by the_biot »

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…

The FAQ, under "How can OSE evolve in the long term, especially in an AI-powered world?" appears to state a very pro-AI view.

I think this is hopelessly naive. The LLMs crapping out code are shamelessly ripping off open source code, sans copyright notice. It makes no sense for a foundation supporting open source to also support this massive copyright massacre.

Also, I think you're going to get flooded with requests to give money to vibe-coded crap, because if you have no skills or shame but want to make a little money off your AI-generated crap, why not try and extract money from this initiative? The curl guy showed this is very real.

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

#24

Post by whit537 »

tabbott wrote: post #19

It's an interesting idea. The current endowment size of less than $1M is immaterial; the question with a project like this will always be how it is able to raise capital. A way something like this could be interesting is if founders started donating 5% of equity when they started a company to an open source foundation like this one. It doesn't impact the founder much financially: Success is very binary for founders.…

Thanks for the idea, tabbott. Made a ticket to track:

https://github.com/osendowment/foundation/issues/24

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

#25

Post by whit537 »

mannanj wrote: post #22
tabbott wrote: post #19

It's an interesting idea. The current endowment size of less than $1M is immaterial; the question with a project like this will always be how it is able to raise capital. A way something like this could be interesting is if founders started donating 5% of equity when they started a company to an open source foundation like this one. It doesn't impact the founder much financially: Success is very binary for founders.…

I'm not an expert here on equity, 5% feels a bit high. I like the idea - even 1% would be significant. In general, could we start to hold accountable and start using public status and tracking of organizational commitment to the open source software they use and make profit off of - that might help a lot as well. We in general are too naive and fail to hold accountable others and ourselves from contributing back when…

I'll put a plug for the Open Source Pledge here:

https://opensourcepledge.com/members/

The companies listed there have all paid at least $2000/eng on staff/year to OSS maintainers. Real accountability. Endowment accepts corporate donors but is primarily geared towards individuals at this point. Pledge members are all companies. Both/and ... to the OSS moon!

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

#26

Post by whit537 »

the_biot wrote: post #23
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…

The FAQ, under "How can OSE evolve in the long term, especially in an AI-powered world?" appears to state a very pro-AI view. I think this is hopelessly naive. The LLMs crapping out code are shamelessly ripping off open source code, sans copyright notice. It makes no sense for a foundation supporting open source to also support this massive copyright massacre. Also, I think you're going to get flooded with requests t…

> flooded with requests to give money to vibe-coded crap

And our plan is to willy-nilly give money to everyone who asks for it with no oversight or attention to other factors or human involvement. Game over. You win.

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

#27

Post by whit537 »

hedora wrote: post #21
briffle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is your proposed solution?

Not the person you replied to, but I imagine less gameable signals than stars would make sense. Download count, default installs in multiple distros, industrial use cases in the cloud all come to mind. Maybe giving money to the endowment gives you a vote? (Kills two birds with one stone.)

The details of how we're thinking about this are in:

https://github.com/osendowment/model

Happy to have you join us there to iterate on the model. We do prioritize input from paid-up members ofc. ;^)

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

#28

Post by kvinogradov »

tabbott wrote: post #19

It's an interesting idea. The current endowment size of less than $1M is immaterial; the question with a project like this will always be how it is able to raise capital. A way something like this could be interesting is if founders started donating 5% of equity when they started a company to an open source foundation like this one. It doesn't impact the founder much financially: Success is very binary for founders.…

Consider this as a nonprofit startup that has just raised a pre-seed round. The current size of $700K is indeed immaterial, as our plan is to scale it significantly in the coming years.

The closest real-world comparable to what we are building is the Wikimedia Endowment, whose former Director is among OSE’s advisors. Like Wikimedia, we aim to be supported not only by large donations but also by contributions from large community — in our case, 150M+ GitHub users.

Our target audience is diverse - from highly successful founders to everyday developers. The Open Source Endowment is prepared to accept donations in both cash and stock from these groups.

While 5% of equity may be too much, 1% seems achievable. I am personally ready to commit 1% of the carried interest from my own VC fund to the endowment.

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

#29

Post by verdverm »

kvinogradov wrote: post #28
tabbott wrote: post #19

It's an interesting idea. The current endowment size of less than $1M is immaterial; the question with a project like this will always be how it is able to raise capital. A way something like this could be interesting is if founders started donating 5% of equity when they started a company to an open source foundation like this one. It doesn't impact the founder much financially: Success is very binary for founders.…

Consider this as a nonprofit startup that has just raised a pre-seed round. The current size of $700K is indeed immaterial, as our plan is to scale it significantly in the coming years. The closest real-world comparable to what we are building is the Wikimedia Endowment, whose former Director is among OSE’s advisors. Like Wikimedia, we aim to be supported not only by large donations but also by contributions from lar…

Running a non-profit with the mentality of SV, what could go wrong?

Definitely something I will actively avoid after parent comment

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

#30

Post by dewey »

verdverm wrote: post #29
kvinogradov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this as a nonprofit startup that has just raised a pre-seed round. The current size of $700K is indeed immaterial, as our plan is to scale it significantly in the coming years. The closest real-world comparable to what we are building is the Wikimedia Endowment, whose former Director is among OSE’s advisors. Like Wikimedia, we aim to be supported not only by large donations but also by contributions from lar…

Running a non-profit with the mentality of SV, what could go wrong? Definitely something I will actively avoid after parent comment

Seems better like the current state...of there not being anything like that? Perfect is the enemy of good.
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