Sustaining Open Source for the Future

Sustaining Open Source for the future Pía Mancini @piamancini @opencollect @SustainOSS

Posting an issue has $0 cost. Companies are hooked on Open Source Community Imbalances* More people are extracting value from a repo than those maintaining it. Shared code but not shared responsibility *Mikeal Rogers

And it finally happened (again)

A module is like a piece of digital property, a right that can be transferred, but you don't get any benefit owning it, like being able to sell or rent it, however you still retain the responsibility. Dominic Tarr

What do we need?

Sustainability refers to the resilience and the thriving of projects, the communities and the individuals that surround them.

Financial Sustainability Sustainability Sustainability of the community Sustainability of its people

We need funding

We need open industry standards.

Name in the community Corporate Incentives Strategic influence on the roadmap Open Source stack health Hiring & retention

We need infrastructure

Corporate models (Red Hat, Open Core, LF) Use Crypto to avoid de legacy system. Open Source as a public utility — paid by taxes. Decentralized community shaped sustainability model.

Open Collective: | ˈəʊpən kəˈlektɪv | • a community of people with a shared mission that operates in full transparency • a new social and economic unit

Free the maintainer

Support your dependencies automatically

Invest in your community a.k.a no people, no code

Give contributors a voice in the roadmap Community Reach out to people with different skillsets Pay for the tasks no one wants to do Invest in F2F opportunities

We need to come up with a model to distribute revenue, responsibilities and earned social capital that takes into account different roles and supports diverse skillsets.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller

Find us: @piamancini @opencollect @SustainOSS