'FOSS Responders' Want to Help Open-Source Groups Survive

"Thanks to the coronavirus, technology events have been canceled left and right," writes ZDNet. "This, in turn, is damaging the finances of companies and groups that depend on these events." Some open-source groups, such as The Linux Foundation, can deal with it. Others aren't so fortunate. Some, such as Drupal Foundation, the Open Source Initiative (OSI), Open Source Matters (Joomla), and Ajv JSON Schema validator, are in real trouble. FOSS Responders is trying to help these and other groups and individuals...

Nuritzi Sanchez, a FOSS Responder co-founder and GitLab senior open-source program manager, said: We "started out around mid-March as a response to COVID-19 event cancellations. It's a group of open source leaders from companies like Indeed, Facebook, Google, Red Hat, GitHub, GitLab, etc." They've set up a process to help both open-source individuals and organizations facing financial trouble. So far, Sanchez said, "organizations are the ones that have been reaching out most so far." They're also consolidating information on how to plan and execute virtual events and provide a place where people can look for and offer help.

FOSS Responders has already had some success in raising donations. Alyssa Wright, Open Collective's director of social engineering, reports that it's raised funds from Indeed, Open Source Collective, Linux Fund, GitHub, Google, Sentry, Ethereum Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.

As a result "FOSS Responders is contributing over $100K to open-source organizations that are experiencing financial strain because of the COVID-19 pandemic."
"The main focus of philanthropic efforts will be elsewhere, as they should be," noted LWN.net back in March, "but it is nice to see our community finding ways to help itself out internally."

Use github sponsorship instead

[DraconPern]

I suggest donating to OSS developers directly using github sponsorship, their donation links etc.  They are the ones that actually make open source work. I don't know who FOSS responders are, or what their money are going to, but it seems like it's an extra layer?

Re:

[themusicgod1]

fuck that noise, make it a requirement that anyone taking this money DOES NOT post any code on github.

Survival of the fittest

[poptix]

Perhaps we should go ahead and let Drupal die.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

If it dies before WP the result will be a net loss of security.

FOSS depending on "events"?

[ffkom]

Never in my long life I experienced any open source project of value to depend on financing by "events".

Actually, there are not any events related to most open source software projects.

Contributing to open software also very much does not depend on physical presence.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Actually, there are not any events related to most open source software projects.

Recently these conferences have popped up everywhere. People go to them to try to advance their careers, I guess.

Systemd has systemd.conf, Apache has ApacheCon, Kafka has Kafka Summit, a bunch of smaller ones (like Tungsten Fabric) have joined together in open networking & edge summit, Prometheus has PromCon, Presto has PrestoCon, Elixir has Elixir Conf, React has ReactConf (but also multiple smaller conferences around the globe), RubyCon, PyCon, Yet Another Perl Con, Akademy for KDE, WordCamp for Wor

Re:

[self.quarantine()]

Maybe someone in the know can enlighten us about what goes on in these events? Wouldn't contributing directly to the developers be a better use of money since none of it would be going to the overhead of renting venues and buying plane tickets, etc. Or are these events, being more about PR and advertising than software development, the only places where tightfisted corporates are willing to part with their funds?

Joomla might die?

[bainjohn]

This is fantastic news! Let's organise a big party!