Inspired by Sustain Summit, I started maintaining a list of all the known platforms for sustaining and monetizing open source software: http://oss.fund/
Let me know if you come across any other platforms/tools, etc.
Cheers,
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Awesome! Great job @bibryam!
I think you missed Open Source Initiative which is a great supporter of funding to open source projects
hi Jaskirat, I couldnt find out how is OSI supporting OSS projects financially, what is the process?
I don’t know about OSI.
The Core Infrastructure Initiative was established after heartbleed to finance OpenSSL and other projects.
thanks, didn’t know about CII. It seems pretty focused and only 9 projects sponsored, but added to the list.
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Hey there,
This is a great idea. Thanks for creating it.
@GeorgLink thanks for it.
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Do initiatives like latest EU bug bounty program are included in this category?
It is now. Thanks for the heads up!
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Big kudos putting this together! Someone on Twitter mentioned Amazon Smile, too, and I’ve seen some European open source podcasts even rely on referrals.
I quoted you on a brief explainer (in Spanish) and list of sources around the late 2018 open source sustainability debate.
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I’ve added Amazon Smiles to the list. And also updated my Smiles account to donate to a software foundation.
Thanks for mentioning the list on your video.
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I appreciate the heck out of your effort with that list and have a probable addition (for the grant section): prototypefund.de . Only for People with residency in Germany, funding up to 47,5k€ for six month. Application for grants (wich are invited to respond to different topics) every half year or so.
But: does this list has to be hosted on google docs?! 
thanks, I’ve added it the list.
Google docs is a temp solution and I will create a website for it at some point.
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I have been adding more and #opensource sustainability platforms to OSS.FUND
But probably, the biggest news so far is “GitHub today launched Sponsors”!
Thoughts?
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It’s a great attempt, happy to see that they take such concrete actions. Being at the center of open source universe, every move that Github makes can have a significant impact.
I expect that it will also be possible to sponsor directly the projects. And if these moves turn out to be successful, I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduce something similar to BackYourStack, which would be a nice complementary.
But more than that, what I believe should be the next step (for Github, or OS community in general) is to study an algorithm / system that determines / ranks the (open source) projects based on their size and importance.
Tidelift has something internally for instance, which would be great if they would make this process public: The long story on paying lifters.
There are so many projects and dependencies that it might be impossible for “consumers” to grasp / process what is important and make a good (and dynamic) “sponsoring”. (In other words, “just get my money and distribute it proportionately please”).
Otherwise, I’m afraid that these systems will mainly reward individuals / projects that has a better public relations skills and there will always be some income imbalance in the ecosystem.
Agree completely with your views
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I guess we can add Github to this now? https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors
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hey all, I’ve updated the platforms with activity metrics, and also turned the spreadsheet into a website. https://oss.fund/ Updating it is also very easy with PRs
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This is great @bibryam! I’ve been using Amazon Smile for years. I switch the charity/non-profit from time to time. Keep up the great work. =)
