# Sustain Together - October Summary

**URL:** <https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125>\
**Category:** 📣 Sustainer Talk\
**Tags:** sustain-weekly\
**Created:** [November 4, 2022, 1:50pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125 "2022-11-04T13:50:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abbycabs](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/abbycabs/32/775_2.png) [@abbycabs](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/abbycabs)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 1:50pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/1 "2022-11-04T13:50:40Z")

</div>

Every other Friday, we host a weekly call to document, share, and respond to current events in open source sustainability.

We have two calls coming up in November:

- Friday, **November 4th** (TODAY) at 16:00 UTC (12 pm ET/5 pm BST) - [notes & connection details](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4dYI8MZiGSCnsXaqxvrM0mtdKmhj4DnuHxjs3kByig/edit)
- Friday, **November 18th** at 16:00 UTC (12 pm ET/5 pm BST) - [notes & connection details](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4dYI8MZiGSCnsXaqxvrM0mtdKmhj4DnuHxjs3kByig/edit)

Here is a summary of all our October calls.

## October 7th, 2022

Big news this week: [Securing Open Source Software Act of 2022](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/securing-open-source-software-act-of-2022/1098). It calls for a federal OSPO that would have 2 years to figure out what OSS they’re using as a government. We noted that the definition of open source was not [OSI’s open source definition](https://opensource.org/osd), and it seems to refer to all of open source as a single community. We’ll be interested to see if this passes!

Faker.js [hit 1.4M downloads](https://twitter.com/_jessicasachs/status/1578119003184267264), and collects [$20K annually on open collective](https://opencollective.com/fakerjs#category-BUDGET). This demonstrated the resilience of the ecosystem, but brought up questions on [whether the original creator should get paid](https://fakerjs.dev/about/announcements/2022-01-14.html#i-heard-something-happened-what-s-the-tldr)? We like seeing more platforms appear for funding the open source ecosystem. [Stackaid](https://www.stackaid.us/) came up in the [forum](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/distributing-down-the-depency-tree-stackaid/1088) a bit. But we can’t forget [Ecosyste.ms](https://ecosyste.ms/)by our friends Ben & Andrew, and [Back Your Stack](https://backyourstack.com/) still works.

Also reading: Amanda Brock’s [book on open source policy](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/open-source-law-policy-and-practice-9780198862345?cc=gb&lang=en&), [GSOC completed projects](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2022/09/gsoc-2022-first-phase-of-completed-projects.html), and a [Linux distro for the visually impaired](https://opensource.com/article/22/9/linux-visually-impaired-users).

## October 21st, 2022

Casual chat this week where we revisited some big ideas around the Tragedy of the Commons & taxing for open source. This led to ask: are there open source economists? Should we invite economists into these conversations?

## Opportunities

- [Nominations for the FSF Awards](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-awards-nominate-those-who-have-charted-a-course-to-freedom-by-november-30) close on November 30.

## Contributors

**Oct 7:** @abbycabs @RichardLitt @Anita_Ihuman @coni2k @brownie @Ibiam

**Oct 21:** @coni2k @abbycabs @Ibiam @brownie

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jdorfman](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/jdorfman/32/14_2.png) [@jdorfman](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/jdorfman)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 3:07pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/2 "2022-11-04T15:07:13Z")

</div>

> [@abbycabs](#):
>
> Friday, **November 4th** (TODAY) at 16:00 UTC (12 pm ET/5 pm BST)

I won’t be able to make it, =(

> [https://thanks.dev](https://thanks.dev) - service that analyzes package dependencies and uses PayPal to distribute payouts to dependency tree

however, I would like to note that Sentry and Sourcegraph (who I work for) will be having a [Twitter Space with the creator of Thanks.dev](https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OyKAVzedkqGb?s=20) @nehzata on Monday

Look forward to the notes and hopefully see you all Monday. =)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![osioke](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/osioke/32/886_2.png) [@osioke](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/osioke)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2022, 4:24pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/3 "2022-11-18T16:24:20Z")

</div>

> [@abbycabs](#):
>
> Friday, **November 18th** at 16:00 UTC (12 pm ET/5 pm BST) - [notes & connection details](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4dYI8MZiGSCnsXaqxvrM0mtdKmhj4DnuHxjs3kByig/edit)

Will this still hold today? I joined the BBB link on the summary doc: [Sustain OSS](https://bbb.sfconservancy.org/b/kar-202-1q8-xkc), but it is lonely.

EDIT: Logged off.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![brownie](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/brownie/32/878_2.png) [@brownie](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/brownie)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2022, 4:52pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/4 "2022-11-18T16:52:53Z")

</div>

Hello Osioke, it starts in a 8 minutes . You can rejoin then

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coni2k](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/coni2k/32/1336_2.png) [@coni2k](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/coni2k)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2022, 7:29pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/5 "2022-11-18T19:29:56Z")

</div>

Ouch, I became a victim of daylight changes 😅

I joined the meeting at 19:00 in Istanbul (16:00 UTC), while apparently, the others joined at 20:00.

It looks like we need to fix the times in the document:  
[Sustain Together Discussions](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4dYI8MZiGSCnsXaqxvrM0mtdKmhj4DnuHxjs3kByig/edit#)

I just checked the invitation for Google Calendar, which uses Eastern Time - New York (12 pm ET) as a timezone.

But 12 pm ET is 17:00 UTC + 6 pm BST now, not 16:00 UTC + 5 pm BST.

@abbycabs, should we remove the UTC and BST times from the document to avoid confusion?

And also, the Outlook invitation ends in September.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coni2k](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/coni2k/32/1336_2.png) [@coni2k](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/coni2k)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 11:27am UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/6 "2022-11-19T11:27:51Z")

</div>

Thanks for these summaries! 🙏

> Casual chat this week where we revisited some big ideas around the Tragedy of the Commons & taxing for open source.

Let me clarify the “taxation” part since it’s a little broad term, and it’s been a while since I mentioned the [“open source tax”](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/experimental-ideas-part-3-benefits/172/3) here.

The question is how to finance the open source ecosystem if we recognize it as a new type of public good.

The idea is to introduce a dedicated tax to proprietary software sales on top of “value added tax” (or “sales tax” in the US). So, each time a consumer purchases licensed software, they also pay this extra tax on top of the sales price. Then, ideally through a transparent public fund, the collected taxes should be distributed back to the open source ecosystem to generate steady revenue.

For 1% open source tax, the invoice should look like this:

> <https://twitter.com/coni2k/status/1380514595509526531>

This approach makes it a two-way relationship with the actual market, where the open-source ecosystem constantly contributes. There’s nothing optional, voluntary, or random. If the market performs well, the open source ecosystem grows and vice versa.

I want to study the numbers on how much revenue open source tax could generate globally and per country, but to give us an idea, one figure I found after a quick search:

> The global business software and services market size was valued at USD 429.59 billion in 2021

> **[Business Software And Services Market Size Report, 2030](https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/business-software-services-market)**
>
> The global business software and services market size was valued at USD 474.61 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.9% from 2023 to 2030

The purpose of introducing such a tax is to solve the investment coordination issue (a.k.a tragedy of the commons), something the individual consumers cannot achieve. And our long-term plan should be to expand the open source ecosystem as much as possible (maximize freedom and innovation), hence why we need to pull such a big gun.

In other words, we should aim to build an environment where it’s normal for any regular (software) company to contribute to the open source ecosystem/digital public goods and generate revenue from it.

There are many details to cover about this scenario, but I wanted to explain the basic structure.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abbycabs](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/abbycabs/32/775_2.png) [@abbycabs](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/abbycabs)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2022, 5:20pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/7 "2022-11-21T17:20:44Z")

</div>

Oh no! Sorry for the time zone confusion @coni2k & @osioke.

I’ve deleted the calendar invites & updated the UTC time for now (but I guess we’ll have to update it every time daylight savings changes?)

If anyone has the bandwidth figure out a better way to get this on people’s calendars, this would be great and very helpful contribution!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abbycabs](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/abbycabs/32/775_2.png) [@abbycabs](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/abbycabs)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2022, 5:21pm UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/8 "2022-11-21T17:21:14Z")

</div>

Thanks for adding more details – I know I put a super high level summary for that week 😅

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RichardLitt](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sustainoss.org/richardlitt/32/8_2.png) [@RichardLitt](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/u/RichardLitt)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2022, 3:16am UTC](https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/sustain-together-october-summary/1125/9 "2022-12-02T03:16:33Z")

</div>

I’m finding this hard to join while in NZ! Planning on rejoining when I am back in US-land, if that’s alright. 🙂