Great idea! I'm trying it now by adding the funding.json file to two of my most-fundable FOSS projects. Feedback welcome. Donations welcome too if you like. :-)
To apply, the project must place a funding.json in their public code repository or at a well-known uri location on their domain: https://dir.floss.fund/submit
That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you Llama Impact Grants, OpenAI Cybersecurity Grants, NLNet, & OpenTechFund.
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Disclaimer: A project I co-develop was granted £3.75k in 2023 back when FOSS United grants were co-sponsored by Zerodha (the same company behind FLOSS/fund). The entire process was over in like 3 days from the date of application.
> That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you
I guess somebody has to point out the obvious ....
First, the process is probably simpler because the donation amounts are going to be smaller. If there's only $1M per year in the bank, I somehow don't see them giving out the sorts of large sums the others you mentioned do, e.g. OpenTechFund says it will give up to $400,000 ... I don't see that happening with a fund that only has $1M a year to give out.
Second, building on the above, giving out large sums involves a greater amount of due diligence.
Finally, sadly, the most obvious point .... a longer form helps sort the wheat from the chaff. Both in terms of cutting down the volume of applications some poor soul has to trawl over, but also helping keep the quality of applications high.
> Put money where the mouth is—a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 for a single recipient, totaling $1 million per year, which we will increase once we understand the dynamics of running the fund.
> once we understand the dynamics of running the fund
I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and would not be surprised if the length of the required paperwork increases in good time.
It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20 pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down the road:
"If your application is accepted, our team will reach out to you for the necessary paperwork (such as tax residency documents required by Indian laws) before processing the funds. This generally involves back-and-forth communication over email and can take up to 4 weeks"
* Fine print: For successful projects only, and up to $100K per year per project
——
From their FAQ:
> Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used, and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage are not considered for the time being.
> A project can apply for funding of up to $100,000 in one year. To keep the logistics and operational overhead of the fund reasonable, we accept requests in denominations of a minimum of $10,000 and multiples of $25,000 thereafter.
I wonder what projects will end up receiving money from this fund. It's nice that more funds are available, but my best guess would be that these will go to projects which probably don't really need them anyway.
From my experience, open source projects are either big and massively funded, able to pay their own developers a salary, or the projects end up in a void filled with burned-out maintainers whose only appreciation is an occasional $15 donation and issues filled with negativity and sometimes even hatred.
In my experience developers as a whole are very stingy, even though they complain about companies not donating to open source all the time, and complain when companies do donate but the amount is too little for their liking. (For instance, when I google “microsoft foss fund payout” the first result after the official landing page is https://lobste.rs/s/wyvnuu/microsoft_foss_fund_winner_curl complaining about the amount.)
As a data point, my open source web app for a casual game received thousands of dollars of donations (not remotely covering the development cost if we go by hourly rate but that’s never the goal), while my open source developer tool with a couple thousand stars on GitHub received <$50 over several years. I don’t beg for donations in either case, just an inconspicuous link.
Disclosure: I donate a very modest amount to various projects every year.
I have a theory for why developers complain it is too low. A large recurring “donation” can be a bit of a trap.
In practice it can be an hidden freelancing or employment relationship.
Donators actually expect you to do things in return, for example with cURL they expect the developer to do security fixes.
Otherwise they will not get the “donation” the next month
It may not be written on a paper for legal reasons, but it is made for a good reason.
A true donation you do not expect for anything in return.
This could explain why they consider donation too low. A gift cannot be too small. But a gift where the giver has very high expectations in return may be too low.
I hate open source and would consider myself the chief anti-open source crusader online. I always try to avoid FOSS and pay indie developers for their software. However, in a few cases I've been forced to use FOSS solutions when there's been no other alternative, and then I donate to the creator of it. And I always see the same thing. Thousands and thousands of downloads over the years and the creator has earned only a hundred dollars in donations.
It's pathetic, and just shows that most people haven't evolved spiritually beyond being freeloaders whenever they can.
No wonder millions would rather stand in line the whole day to get free bread than pay just a little for their food.
Great idea! I'm trying it now by adding the funding.json file to two of my most-fundable FOSS projects. Feedback welcome. Donations welcome too if you like. :-)
* Assertables is a Rust crate that provides assert macros for smarter testing: https://github.com/SixArm/assertables-rust-crate/blob/main/f...
* BoldContacts is a "big print" mobile app that helps people who have disabilities related to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, ALS, and more: https://github.com/BoldContacts/boldcontacts-mobile-app-for-...
To apply, the project must place a funding.json in their public code repository or at a well-known uri location on their domain: https://dir.floss.fund/submit
That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you Llama Impact Grants, OpenAI Cybersecurity Grants, NLNet, & OpenTechFund.
---
Disclaimer: A project I co-develop was granted £3.75k in 2023 back when FOSS United grants were co-sponsored by Zerodha (the same company behind FLOSS/fund). The entire process was over in like 3 days from the date of application.
They probably need more stuff for tax (tax deduction) reasons, after all it can be considered a (deductible) donation.
> That's already 10x more simpler than the 20 page document some of these other orgs have you fill. Looking at you
I guess somebody has to point out the obvious ....
First, the process is probably simpler because the donation amounts are going to be smaller. If there's only $1M per year in the bank, I somehow don't see them giving out the sorts of large sums the others you mentioned do, e.g. OpenTechFund says it will give up to $400,000 ... I don't see that happening with a fund that only has $1M a year to give out.
Second, building on the above, giving out large sums involves a greater amount of due diligence.
Finally, sadly, the most obvious point .... a longer form helps sort the wheat from the chaff. Both in terms of cutting down the volume of applications some poor soul has to trawl over, but also helping keep the quality of applications high.
> First, the process is probably simpler because the donation amounts are going to be smaller.
I've applied to each of those funds for ~£5k. The process remains the same.
From the post:
> Put money where the mouth is—a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 for a single recipient, totaling $1 million per year, which we will increase once we understand the dynamics of running the fund.
> once we understand the dynamics of running the fund
I suspect that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting and would not be surprised if the length of the required paperwork increases in good time.
It is also worth reading the FAQ, it very much sounds like it remains the case that you are not going to escape 20 pages of paperwork, just that they are kicking the can down the road:
"If your application is accepted, our team will reach out to you for the necessary paperwork (such as tax residency documents required by Indian laws) before processing the funds. This generally involves back-and-forth communication over email and can take up to 4 weeks"
* Fine print: For successful projects only, and up to $100K per year per project
——
From their FAQ:
> Currently, our focus is on supporting existing, widely used, and impactful projects to specifically contribute to their sustainability. Very new projects or projects with minimal usage are not considered for the time being.
> A project can apply for funding of up to $100,000 in one year. To keep the logistics and operational overhead of the fund reasonable, we accept requests in denominations of a minimum of $10,000 and multiples of $25,000 thereafter.
https://floss.fund/faq/
A better title: Floss/fund: Up to $100K/year for popular open source projects
Still admirable though...
I wonder what projects will end up receiving money from this fund. It's nice that more funds are available, but my best guess would be that these will go to projects which probably don't really need them anyway.
From my experience, open source projects are either big and massively funded, able to pay their own developers a salary, or the projects end up in a void filled with burned-out maintainers whose only appreciation is an occasional $15 donation and issues filled with negativity and sometimes even hatred.
Interesting that these kind of things are done by less known companies, not the big names. At least that's my (uninformed) impression.
Actually many big name companies do contribute a lot to open source. Few Examples:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members https://openjsf.org/members https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/
FYI - Zerodha is the biggest platform for retail investors in the Indian markets.
To be fair Microsoft have been making contributions. I’ve received two $1000 contributions from them in the past couple of years.
It’s obviously not enough to give up the day job, but it dwarfs all other contributions I’ve had.
In my experience developers as a whole are very stingy, even though they complain about companies not donating to open source all the time, and complain when companies do donate but the amount is too little for their liking. (For instance, when I google “microsoft foss fund payout” the first result after the official landing page is https://lobste.rs/s/wyvnuu/microsoft_foss_fund_winner_curl complaining about the amount.)
As a data point, my open source web app for a casual game received thousands of dollars of donations (not remotely covering the development cost if we go by hourly rate but that’s never the goal), while my open source developer tool with a couple thousand stars on GitHub received <$50 over several years. I don’t beg for donations in either case, just an inconspicuous link.
Disclosure: I donate a very modest amount to various projects every year.
I have a theory for why developers complain it is too low. A large recurring “donation” can be a bit of a trap.
In practice it can be an hidden freelancing or employment relationship.
Donators actually expect you to do things in return, for example with cURL they expect the developer to do security fixes.
Otherwise they will not get the “donation” the next month
It may not be written on a paper for legal reasons, but it is made for a good reason.
A true donation you do not expect for anything in return.
This could explain why they consider donation too low. A gift cannot be too small. But a gift where the giver has very high expectations in return may be too low.
> Otherwise they will not get the “donation” the next month
Claw back this month’s “donation” if I don’t meet your expectations — sure, that’s an air quotes donation.
No donation next month if I don’t meet your expectations — that’s just a bona fide donation like any other.
I hate open source and would consider myself the chief anti-open source crusader online. I always try to avoid FOSS and pay indie developers for their software. However, in a few cases I've been forced to use FOSS solutions when there's been no other alternative, and then I donate to the creator of it. And I always see the same thing. Thousands and thousands of downloads over the years and the creator has earned only a hundred dollars in donations.
It's pathetic, and just shows that most people haven't evolved spiritually beyond being freeloaders whenever they can.
No wonder millions would rather stand in line the whole day to get free bread than pay just a little for their food.
I think any employee in tech should appeal to their employers to donate / contribute to the open source projects they use.
Appealing will only get so far in any bureaucratic mess, especially if those responsible for the decision are way above your pay grade.
These companies instead should carve out a matching donation program for employees funding FOSS projects.
Playing devil's advocate/CFO, what value does "the business" receive from this transaction?
The owner of this website (floss.fund) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (TN) from accessing this website.
Our regional view of your open fund :)
I wonder if they would fund a fork of WordPress given the mess that's become as of late.
Perhaps such move would spark others to also fund such a fork.
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