Funding FOSS
summary
Panelists describe concrete portfolios and limits: a German prototype fund €50k grant supports projects like Mastodon’s Android client, while one funders lists open MLS and openbgp.js among protocol grants and another backs TLS WireGuard Signal and OS projects. Common findings: funds largely pay code not design or community work, many awards are one-year funding cycles, reporting and legal overhead block small teams, and maintainers need multi‑year, developer‑time commitments rather than one‑off feature grants.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction and panelists
- 5:46Challenges in open source maintenance
- 9:36Gaps in funding ecosystem
- 14:08Resiliency of funding sources
- 19:20Corporate responsibility in open source
- 27:08Ideal funding changes in four years
- 34:07Funding requirements and project constraints
- 38:43Seed funding opportunities
- 41:09Closing remarks and Q&A
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