Open Source Endowment – new funding source for open source maintainers

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Funding model and governance

  • Endowment invests donations in a low‑risk portfolio; target ~5%/year for grants, with extra returns reinvested to beat inflation and cover minimal operating costs.
  • Currently all work is volunteer; board and executive director must donate at least $1,000/year (“skin in the game”) and there are no salaries yet.
  • Membership (≥$1,000/year) gives advisory and governance rights, including input on grant models and board appointments; some see this as necessary alignment, others as pay‑to‑play elitism.

Relation to existing funding platforms

  • Distinguished from Open Collective / Open Source Collective: those are payment/fiscal-hosting platforms and 501(c)(6)s; OSE is a 501(c)(3) endowment that chooses recipients and distributes grants.
  • Some commenters say this distinction should be made much clearer on the website.

Scope, priorities, and selection

  • Stated focus is on “deep infrastructure” and highly used, non‑commercial OSS rather than new, AI‑generated or “vibe-coded” projects.
  • Some fear bias toward trendy devtools and founders’ networks rather than critical infrastructure or user-facing projects.
  • Current nomination flow orients around GitHub URLs; critics argue this marginalizes projects off GitHub (e.g., Debian, Gentoo, Codeberg, SourceHut, GNU ecosystem). Suggestions include distro usage stats, download counts, and broader repo support.

AI, copyright, and centralization

  • FAQ’s pro‑AI tone triggers pushback from those who see LLM training on OSS as “copyright massacre”; others argue OSS and open data are prerequisites for LLMs and should embrace that role.
  • Debate over GitHub’s dominance and AI policies feeds objections to using it as the primary signal for “critical” projects.

Grants vs long-term sustainability

  • Microgrants (~$5k) are seen as helpful but insufficient to change maintenance economics; some argue maintainers need stable, living‑wage‑level funding (e.g., ~$50k/year+ or tenured‑chair style positions).
  • OSE’s stance: start small, grow endowment, and scale grant size and duration over time.

Government vs private funding, legality, and trust

  • Some see OSE as filling a gap left by governments; others say its existence highlights failure of tax-based funding.
  • Discussion of 501(c)(3) constraints: concern about funding “commercial product development” and avoiding pitfalls that hit prior OSS nonprofits.
  • Skepticism about market risk, potential fraud, and “SV/VC mentality” competes with optimism that an endowment, if transparent and frugal, is a promising experiment.