Open Source Summit Europe 2022

How can we best fund the development, maintenance, sustainability and growth of OSS ecosystems? This is a difficult question to which there are many opinions and no ‘right’ answers. Often it is OSS foundations that find themselves responsible for raising funds to support both their communities and their infrastructure, with the difficult task of deciding how to prioritise and distribute limited financial resources. This session will discuss the competing priorities in funding OSS, and the issues with the current established norms for funding OSS work, such as via individual sponsorship or through a patchwork of small and disconnected awards. Rebecca and Paul will reflect on their own experiences of establishing the Rust Foundation’s package of financial and infrastructure support. The session will discuss how they developed a more targeted approach to funding using a grants-based and impact-focused system, and will reflect on the benefits and risks associated with this. The session will also examine how gaps emerge in OSS ecosystems and how to plug these with an outcome-oriented focus. The session will provide practical actions, processes and ideas useful to anyone with an interest in how OSS can be effectively and sustainably funded.