Funding Open Source: The 'funders' perspective

A couple weeks ago I was at the Linux Foundation Member Summit, presenting a panel about applying the principles of product market fit to open source projects. The conference was smaller than most I go to, and any attendee could set up an informal discussion about any topic of their choice. 

One such discussion that caught my eye was about ‘funding open source.’ I assumed initially that this was going to be about monetizing open source — how maintainers could fund their projects. I was mistaken. It was actually a handful of folks from very big companies talking about how they could send money to maintainers of open source projects. 

I hadn’t ever considered this perspective. I do like to understand other businesses, and though I might wonder what the economic or profit margins might look like at my local bakery or favorite shoe manufacturer, I don’t put much thought into how to best support them (buy their stuff) and even less thought into what I would need to do to send them my money. But when it comes to financially supporting an open source project, these can be real barriers. 

I think some of the concerns that came up in the discussion would be interesting to others in the open source ecosystem, whether or not you have a company looking to monetize an open source project. Because the types of companies represented in the discussion were the same type that would buy an enterprise version of an open source project, and understanding the barrier that exist to sending money to a pure open source project is important. 

Open source is critical

It should be noted that this was not a discussion run by the philanthropy arm of a major corporation. We’re not talking about a donation to the opera, but rather companies recognizing that they depend on open source projects and should take steps to make sure the people behind those open source projects don’t get burned out and abandon the project. The reason these folks care about sending money to open source projects isn’t touchy-feely, it’s because they recognize that people need financial resources to accomplish things that that doing something completely for free is generally not sustainable in the long term. 

Internal politics matters

So why didn’t these folks just ask the maintainers for their address and mail them a check? First of all, it’s challenging to explain to internal stakeholders why they are giving money to someone. It’s not that it’s not worth it, it’s that the conversation is different when you say “we’re buying X product or service.” In some (many) companies there’s just no way to handle a request to pay money when it’s not part of a purchase. 

How much is enough?

In all the discussion, there was also a hole: The problem with this kind of ad-hoc funding of open source projects is that they seemed unlikely to me to achieve their goal, which is reducing maintainer burnout. Money is always great! But chances are, the maintainers of the open source project aren’t worried about how to buy groceries. More likely, the problem is that they have a full-time job and don’t have tons of time left over for the project, thus leading to burnout. They then have two options: quit the job and monetize their open source project or continue working full-time and get occasional monetary boosts from companies who like (or depend on) their work. I personally doubt that many software engineers will quit their jobs for the kinds of payments being discussed — a couple hundred bucks a month or a one-time payment of $10k. So I was left wondering how, precisely, the money actually reduces burnout. 

In summary, my takeaway is that people care a lot about open source and are willing to pay to ensure their favorite open source projects are stable and well-maintained. Maintainers need to make it as easy as possible — and also think about whether or not it makes sense to make the open source project their full-time job.