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Who Pays For FOSS Foundations?

The Funding Behind Open Source Organizations

What does this have to do with Sustainability?

SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS

Maintainers
Contributors
Foundations
Corporations
Governments ] .right-column-equal[ What
Direct Funding
Indirect Funding
Engagement
Policies
Grants ]

??? This talk is just one small part of sustainability for FOSS in general - it’s important to realize that EACH of these areas has their own entire glossary and ways of thinking about sustainability, and they are all important.

SPACEBAR

SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS

Maintainers
Contributors
Foundations
Corporations
Governments ] .right-column-equal[ What
Direct Funding
Indirect Funding
Engagement
Policies
Grants ] — template: logorb
Who pays for FOSS Foundations?

What does that actually mean?

What is open source?
How do you pay for it?
What things or activities are paid for?
How do Foundations get funded?

??? Talking with 5 people about “FOSS Funding” gives you 10 different topics to cover, so let’s define what we’re covering here today.

First off, some brief definitions:

The important question: what are the different ways to contribute to open source - code, services, activities, events, sponsorships

Then we’ll talk money - how key FOSS Foundations get funded

I expect many of you will end up with more questions to ask after this talk - there are many other areas of “funding” to cover out there, and I’m hoping this overview will make you think a little more about how open source works at scale, especially with larger projects or the many foundations that provide a home to so many important projects out there.

What does Open Source mean?

Publicly available source code under an Open Source Initiative listed license.

??? Let’s start with the simplest part first. Open Source is released under an OSD-compatible license, and is available for free under the license. Free Software is similarly defined either by the Free Software Foundation’s principles, or the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

What’s really important is: who’s behind that project? Who are the committers, and how do they manage the project? What kind of governance to they use? How do they get other support, for awareness, events, outreach, or infrastructure?

Who are we talking about?

Contributing work
- Users
- Contributors
- Committers / Maintainers
Contributing work or funding
- Commercial companies
- Governments
- Research / Academic institutions

??? On the whole, individuals are contributing to open source projects in a wide variety of ways, although individuals are rarely directly funding open source projects (other than of course with their own valuable time!). This includes all those great non-code contributions, like bug reports, docs, questions and answers, etc.

What most people are curious about is: how much of the work of building and maintaining open source projects is done by individuals, in their free time or as hobbyists? And how much of this work is funded directly by companies, governments, or academia - either by hiring engineers to work on projects, or by funding FOSS events, services, or other activities.

The ratios of who does what varies widely depending on the project or industry - but there are clear trends in major projects.

How do we pay for open source?

Pull requests
Submitting bugs
Fixing bugs
Providing support
Donating new projects ] .right-column-equal[ Funding
Sponsoring
Events
Services
Hosting / Clouds
Paying employees ]

??? Just using Open Source doesn’t cost anything - what we’re talking about here is creating and maintaining projects.

Hopefully we all realize that the ‘paying’ part - as in money - is only one part of how open source software actually gets created and maintained. Sure, there are plenty of examples of companies or grant funders providing cash sponsorships for major projects, or running events or providing CI and cloud services to open source projects.

But the more important impact from the project perspective are the actual contributions of work. All the code submitted, all the bugs reported - or bugs fixed! All the help and support offered to other users - who then become contributors in the ecosystem. While all these contributions aren’t necessarily a result of cash payment somewhere, they are certainly related the key way that individual projects grow: by growing their code and community. The fact that individuals may contribute as part of their paid dayjob often obscures which work is “paid” or not.

I have a theory about which half is important: contributions.

Most major open source is from companies

??? Here’s my belief: most of the major open source projects used today are now primarily built and maintained by companies directly paying their employees to contribute. Let’s see what data from some major projects show.

Linux kernel development

The Linux Kernel Report tracks which companies are sponsoring kernel development.

??? The Linux Kernel Report does a thorough analysis of both who’s contributing all the code, as well as who they’re working for or being paid by.

SPACEBAR

–

In 2020, at least 83% of code was paid corporate work

–

2018 it was 85%
2016 it was 80%
2015 it was 80%
2013 it was 80%
2012 it was 75%
2010 it was 70%

??? The great majority of work done in the Linux kernel is done directly by corporations (having their employees make the fixes), and this number is only going up over time.

Apache software committers

Survey: how Apache committers contribute to their projects.

~50% replied it was as an Employee (as their job)
~40% replied as an Individual (outside regular job)
~10% were Retired, students, other

??? Let’s look at the ASF - which has hundreds of Apache project communities. In 2016 we ran a survey.

The ASF ran a similar survey this year, which also shows a high percentage of work on our projects is directly paid.

Drupal commits and sponsors

Drupal regularly updates their contribution reports - in 2021:

68% of code was Wholly sponsored work
16% was Work that’s a mix or not credited
16% was Purely volunteer work

??? Drupals’ credit system uses commit logs to show not just who wrote the code, but if the contributor was sponsored or paid to do make that commit by a company or other entity. That counts either software vendor employees, or consultants or integrators working for end users.

The ratio of sponsored to not sponsored is increasing over time, and my bet is a similar ratio is in most of the widely-used software products in business today. See details of the program: https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/contribution-credit

Where do projects come from?

Where did today’s widely-used open source projects get started?

Passionate hobbyists?
Academic or research projects?
Vendor groups collaborating together?
Single company projects being donated?

??? How do projects start being open sourced? The answer is: all of these places

While plenty of FOSS projects you may use came from individual developers, many of the key bits of technology used in business today came from… business.

SPACEBAR

This is where opens source foundations like Apache, Eclipse, and Linux Foundation come in: they all have incubation processes to help new projects get started as true open source or open governance projects.

–

All of the above

But mostly: companies

??? While the long tail of lone developer open source projects may be interesting technically, when we consider open source that makes an impact - is broadly used - we find most come from either corporate spinoff projects, or individual projects that gained significant corporate contributions and leadership early.

Most major open source is from companies

??? So, what do you think of my thesis now?

At least half of contributions to major projects are effectively funded, by companies paying their staff, or by integrators or agencies doing paid work for clients.

Direct or indirect contributions?

Direct contributions
- Code, cloud credits, services
- Committed by corporate employees or individuals
Indirect contributions
- Company hiring consultant to contribute
Funding
- Sponsoring Foundation or project directly

??? Let’s review how you can contribute to projects.

Committing code (docs, tests, community support, etc) or services for software engineering
- That you contribute yourself - as an individual or a paid employee - funding often opaque to the community
Hiring someone to do the above work
Or: directly funding FOSS Foundations or projects with cash or sponsorships.

Role of FOSS Foundations

Foundations can be an independent home for open source projects.

Why is this important?

What services do Foundations provide?

???

For small projects, this is a regular struggle - keeping a project alive over time, ensuring fixes are made, drawing in new contributors, or keeping the CI/CD pipelines running..

Thus, we have FOSS foundations, like Apache, Linux, NumFocus, Software Freedom Conservancy, and now many others.
These foundations can scale up all the non-software engineering a larger project needs - like fundraising, legal, infrastructure, governance and mentoring support.

Services Foundations provide

Foundations provide:

Governance
Mentoring
Legal shield
Fundraising
Hosting, build pipelines, clouds
Respectability / brand management
Events
Community education / management
Marketing / ecosystem development

??? We still rely on many volunteers to help, but when it comes to reviewing contracts or doing the accounting on donations, we need hired help. Accounting volunteers are rare to find in the coding world, and few coders want to carry a beeper for 24x7 support when the server goes down. All these services we need money for.

All of these services are hard to provide at scale with volunteers - so Foundations are needed to provide the fiscal organization to pay someone to provide them.

Foundation Services, Sponsors, And Funding

??? Non-profit foundations attract some donations - from individuals or small businesses who want to say thanks for the software we provide. But the bulk of funding for most software non-profits comes from corporate grants or recurring sponsors.

How do these foundations get their money? Primarily recurring corporate sponsorships.

Let’s review some key FOSS Foundations, and how they’re funded.

Software Freedom Conservancy

43 projects
Independent governance
Independent branding
Focus on software freedom ] .right-column-equal[ Scalable Services
Legal
IP stewardship
Pass-thru fundraising
GPL compliance ]

??? Conservancy offers basic fiscal sponsorship services, along with some legal and IP support. Additional services may be available resources permitting when projects make requests.

Conservancy - Sponsors

Conservancy’s current major sponsors are:

Amateur Radio Digital Communications
Code Weavers
Google
iFixit
Indeed ] .right-column-equal[
JMP
Mozilla
Mark Wielaard
David Turner
Danielle Sucher ]

??? Conservancy lists their major sponsors, along with a number of smaller, individual sponsors. Conservancy doesn’t list sponsorship amounts, but my bet is that the above sponsors provide the bulk of Conservancy’s annual income.

Conservancy - Funding

??? On the left, we see Conservancy’s annual gross income for the past few years, primarily from donations. Conservancy’s income is on a steady upward trend, surpassing $4M in 2021, the last year that official IRS 990 forms are available for.

On the right, we can see Conservancy’s Net Assets - cash in the bank or investments for their continuing operations, which also has a solid upwards trend surpassing $6M in 2021.

Apache Software Foundation

200+ projects
Apache Way governance
Apache Project branding
Focus on community over code ] .right-column-equal[ Scalable Services
Legal
IP stewardship
Infrastructure
Conferences
Community mentoring
Lifecycle support ]

??? The ASF hosts well over 200 Apache project communities. While each project is managed independently, the board provides oversight to ensure they are following the Apache Way. The ASF also provides hosting and infra, and especially community mentorship, as well as lifecycle support in the Apache Incubator and Apache Attic.

Apache - Sponsors

Apache’s Platinum sponsors are:

Amazon Web Services
Apple
Microsoft
Huawei
Pineapple Fund ] .right-column-equal[
yahoo!
Facebook
Google
VMWare ]

??? Those are just the platinum sponsors, but they represent about $800K in annual donations, or about half the financial income for the entire ASF. These sponsors get a thank you and a listing on our webpage, but otherwise have no influence over how the ASF or Apache projects are run.

Thank you to all the ASF sponsors, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and in-kind sponsors too as well as all our ApacheCon event sponsors!

Apache - In-Kind Sponsors

Apache’s Targeted (In-Kind/Services) Platinum sponsors are:

GitHub
DLAPiper
leaseweb
Microsoft
yahoo!
Sonatype
CloudBees ] .right-column-equal[
OSU Open Source Lab
JetBrains
fastly
JFrog
AWS
Gradle ]

??? There are more ways to organizationally support Apache than just donating cash. Each of these organizations is a Targeted Platinum sponsor, meaning they donate the equivalent of a Platinum sponsorship of hosting services, bandwidth, cloud credits, and CI pipelines or testing resources to Apache projects.

Importantly, these are all services that Apache projects directly need and are actually using.

Apache - Funding

??? Here we can see the ASF’s income and assets - an average of about $1million annual income, with the singular blip of the Pineapple fund one-time donation in 2017. More projects and more services that Conservancy, but slightly smaller funding numbers.

Note that all numbers here are taken directly from the 990 tax forms that all US charities file with the IRS.

NumFocus

59 hosted projects
60+ affiliated projects
Independent brands & governance
Focus on science & Python ] .right-column-equal[ Scalable Services
Legal
IP stewardship
Conferences
Community mentoring
Pass-thru fundraising ]

??? NumFocus is another typical FOSS project host, with a wide variety of scientific projects. Hosted projects are offerred a full variety of services, and some affilated projects choose just some of the services they need.

NumFocus - Sponsors

NumFocus’ Principal Corporate Sponsors are:

Bloomberg
IBM
posit
AWS ] .right-column-equal[
Anaconda
bodo.ai
T.Rowe Price
Google ]

??? NumFocus has a similar set of corporate or major sponsors much like other foundations here, and also has support from some scientific grantmaking and similar organizations.

NumFocus - Funding

??? NumFocus shows a roughly similar funding picture as the previous foundations. There are likely differences in the ways NumFocus is funded given their strong focus on scientific and research projects - meaning both different types of corporations interested, as well as much more of an opportunity for grants.

Eclipse Foundation

350+ projects
Independent governance
Various branding
Shared releases ] .right-column-equal[ Scalable Services
Legal
IP stewardship
Infrastructure
Development process support
Ecosystem development ]

??? Eclipse’s model is partly focused on their IDE and developer tools, so along with the usual services, they provide strong development process and integration support. Many projects also follow a shared release schedule, as their projects work together.

Eclipse - Sponsors

The Strategic Members of Eclipse are:

CEA List
DLR
ESA
Fraunhofer FOKUS
Fujitsu
Huawei
IBM ] .right-column-equal[
Mercedes-Benz Tech
Microsoft
OBEO
Oracle
Red Hat
Bosch
SAP ]

??? Eclipse has a mixed model, where there are corporate sponsors just contributing cash, but far more strategic members who contribute both funds as well as designated contributions and employee work.

Eclipse - Funding

??? Here we can see the Eclipse’s income and assets - averaging well about $5million or more in annual income. Since much of their income is tied to corporations that are also major sponsors, their income may tend to be more even than donation-focused organizations.

Note that Eclipse has moved their governance to Belgium, meaning that we can’t necessarily compare all of their numbers to other fully US-based organizations.

Linux Foundation

Hundreds of projects
Industry/Community mixed governance
Independent branding
Multiple project scales ] .right-column-equal[ Scalable Services
Legal / IP stewardship
Infrastructure
Development process support
Community management
Ecosystem development
Marketing
Conferences ]

??? The Linux Foundation has a large number projects, several of them giant factors in today’s software world. They also operate with an agency model, where Linux Foundation employees provide a wide variety of services to projects - some employees are directly assigned to specific projects.

Linux Foundation - Sponsors

That’s a complicated question.

Many Linux Foundation projects have their own funding models.

???

Linux Foundation - Sponsors

The Platinum Corporate Members of the Linux Foundation:

Ericsson
Fujitsu
Hitachi
Huawei
Intel
Meta
Microsoft ] .right-column-equal[
NEC
Oracle
Qualcomm
Red Hat
Samsung
Tencent
VMWare ]

??? Each platinum member/sponsor of the Linux Foundation as a whole reportedly pays about 500K annually, and provides representatives both on the board of the foundation as well as in various technical bodies of collaborative projects.

This list represents over 7M of annual income for the Linux Foundation.

CNCF - Sponsors

The eighteen Platinum member sponsors of the CNCF are:

Alibaba Cloud
AWS
Apple
ARM Holdings
Cisco
Fujitsu
Google Cloud
Huawei
IBM Cloud ] .right-column-equal[
Intel
JD.Com
Microsoft Azure
Net App
Oracle
Paloalto Networks
RedHat
SAP
VMWare ]

???

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is a subsidiary of the Linux Foundation, and just for the CNCF, they have this list of platinum sponsors, each of which are donating in the range of 250K or more annually to the CNCF.

These are just sponsoring the CNCF, and likely represents at least 4M in annual income, if not more, for the CNCF and Linux Foundation.

Hyperledger Foundation - Sponsors

The Premiere Members of Hyperledger are:

Accenture
DTCC
Fujitsu
Hitachi
IBM

??? Each of these premier members for Hyperledger likely provides at least 250K annual donation, as well as employees working on the project.

Who Sponsors The Linux Foundation?

… and the 200+ Collaborative Projects at the LF?

Answer: A lot of companies, many repeatedly.

??? There are probably a dozen major collaborative projects, each with their own sponsors (and products), and another hundred plus or so smaller projects - still interesting, but with fewer or little direct funding.

In particular, you’ll note there are many software vendors - and non-software companies! - who are sponsoring multiple projects at the LF with cash as well as contributions.

Linux Foundation - Funding

??? Here we can see the LF’s income and assets. Huh. Those are pretty big numbers - these charts are an order of magnitude higher than the earlier charts. In 2021, LF made $140 million in income, and listed net assets of $89 million.

Anyone surprised at these numbers? Remember: these figures are from 2018, the most year IRS 990 forms are available for. As a Business League, the LF doesn’t otherwise provide public budget figures, so we don’t know what their 2019 income was, or what the blip in their net assets over 2017 was.

Governance, Funding, And Community All Matter

Community and governance matters too, beyond funding or license.

??? Wow - I bet those funding numbers are giving you something to think about going forward, huh? These four foundations - along with several others - provide valuable fiscal and community hosting to a large percentage of interesting open source projects in the world today. And remember: actual contributions and community governance are often more important long-term than just cash funding.

When you bring a new project to the ASF or to another foundation, you’re making a fundamental choice about more than the license. You’re setting the stage for how the project is going to grow, who’s going to want to contribute to it, and where it’s long-term direction can end up. Funding and governance are more important than the license choice.

In particular, funding is not required to get FOSS Foundation services - but in some cases, more funding does get you more concentrated help from open source experts. The large cash differences in the charts earlier are definitely related to the amount of services different foundations can directly provide to their flagship projects.

Who Pays For Open Source?

The Data Is Out There

FOSS funding data for Foundations

Do your own funding research

Open Source Sustainability research

Thank You & Questions!

@ShaneCurcuru

Apache v2.0

What Ways Do Companies Contribute?

Obvious: employees contributing code
Obvious: sponsoring events
Not obvious: infrastructure, tooling

There’s a lot of talk about how much - or how little - money various companies and vendors pay into the open source arena. But the discussions about money are missing a huge factor: what are all the different ways that Companies contribute work back to FOSS projects?

It’s often not obvious to quantify some of the supporting ways that companies contribute, but they’re certainly there. Managing a full open source project needs source control, web space, continuous integration and testing, and often requires access to cloud services. Either directly or indirectly many software vendors like github, amazon, google and more all effectively donate these kinds of services to projects. Sometimes it’s explicit and called out, often it’s simply free accounts for any open source contributor

But the real value is in how much corporate employees contribute work to FOSS projects - code, documentation, tests, and more.

While many individual developers may feel unappreciated for their volunteer work, that’s only a small part of the overall patches and code that is put into open source projects. It depends on the kind and size of project, but in some areas the majority of work is done by employees at software vendors writing open source code as their dayjob.

Open Source is a ______

Sustainable contribution model.
Model for broad innovation.
NOT a Business model.

Who Pays For FOSS Foundations?

The Funding Behind Open Source Organizations

@ShaneCurcuru

Slides with Speaker notes

What does this have to do with Sustainability?

SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS

SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS

Who pays for FOSS Foundations?

What does Open Source mean?

Who are we talking about?

How do we pay for open source?

Most major open source is from companies

Linux kernel development

Apache software committers

Drupal commits and sponsors

Where do projects come from?

Most major open source is from companies

Direct or indirect contributions?

Role of FOSS Foundations

Services Foundations provide

Foundation Services, Sponsors, And Funding

Software Freedom Conservancy

Conservancy - Sponsors

Conservancy - Funding

Apache Software Foundation

Apache - Sponsors

Apache - In-Kind Sponsors

Apache - Funding

NumFocus

NumFocus - Sponsors

NumFocus - Funding

Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse - Sponsors

Eclipse - Funding

Linux Foundation

Linux Foundation - Sponsors

Linux Foundation - Sponsors

CNCF - Sponsors

Hyperledger Foundation - Sponsors

Who Sponsors The Linux Foundation?

Linux Foundation - Funding

Governance, Funding, And Community All Matter

Who Pays For Open Source?

The Data Is Out There

Thank You & Questions!

@ShaneCurcuru

Other topics to investigate

What Ways Do Companies Contribute?

Open Source is a ______

What does “Open Source Sustainability” mean to you?