Hi Michael, YC-funded companies are known to be large-scale consumers of free and open source software. They are able to leverage the competitive advantage provided by this digital infrastructure to build successful, high valuation businesses. Some of those companies have gone on to make great contributions to the Open Source community themselves. Would YC ever consider setting up a fund for the builders and maintain…
I may be a bit dense here, but who are the 'builders and maintainers of the infrastructure'? Can you give an example? I'm thinking Docker, GitLab, NPM are both in some ways doing both the development of their businesses, and maintaining the infrastructure and open-sourcing their code. Are these not the sorts of examples you're thinking of? Does this require a separate fund?
On April 7, 2014, CVE-2014-0160 aka Heartbleed was publicly disclosed. At the time, 66% of websites used OpenSSL (via Netcraft). Also, OpenSSL had 1 full-time engineer, and only a few volunteers. Yearly donations were about $2,000. 17 days after Heartbleed Jim Zemlin from the Linux Foundation as well as thirteen companies stepped up to the plate and created the Core Infrastructure Initiative and pledged to donate $100,000 a year for 3 years to help prevent the next Heartbleed.
The point is this, Open Source isn't free. Docker, GitLab and other 'open-core' businesses stand on the shoulder of giants. If they raise a round of fundraising or whatever Press Release hits the wire, they get praise (which is fine, I love it). But the only time a project like the OpenSSL project gets press is when something goes wrong which I don't think is fair to them.
We can keep being reactive or we can start being proactive. I believe YC has the capital and influence to change this thinking of Open Source doesn't cost anything.