Hello all,

On Mon, Oct 14, 2024 at 05:16:31PM +0200, Sasha Romijn wrote:

On 14 Oct 2024, at 16:26, Vesna Manojlovic @ RIPE.net wrote:

What are your thought about this approach?

Thanks for bringing this to the list! I like their approach, it really addresses some of the pain points of open source funding: some organisations generate large revenues building on open source without contributing, the funding problems are harder especially for smaller projects, and funding should not just be a one time effort, but an ongoing thing.

I’d be curious to hear from people who work at organisations this is aimed at, whether they think they can get their employer to join, and what the obstacles are.

The main obstacle from our customers I have ever heard is the internal auditing department where they demand to have some direct services to be provided to the specific company. No service? No payment.

This is why BIRD is slowly but surely moving from “your payment is supporting the development” to actually “BIRD Team supports your deployment”.

And do you have other examples of funding FLOSS ? (in addition to the grants from NLNET, NGI, RIPE NCC Sovern Tech Fund (mentioned in the blog)… ).

Some other ones I am aware of are: * Open technology fund * SIDN Fund * GÉANT Innovation Programme (currently closed) * TCU keeps a wiki with many fundraising opportunities

Heard 2 days ago about https://maintenance-as-a-service.de.

I would very much appreciate having an opportunity to discus these affairs more properly and deeply during the upcoming RIPE meeting. Sadly, I haven’t had time and energy to prepare anything, and I don’t think that I’m the right person to open/facilitate a discussion on these topics, as I feel some conflict of interests there.

I can do a (lightning) talk on how our support model works, though, if there is nothing better to open this topic.

Maria

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Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.