Two years ago, we co-hosted our first Future of Open Source event together with
GitHub Sponsors. Six maintainers helped us consider the question, “Is it
sustainable?”
Much has happened since then, and it’s time to check in again on the state of
sustainability in Open Source.
This time, we discussed the topic from the point of view of funders. Chad
Whitacre, Sentry’s Head of Open Source and a core contributor to FOSS
Funders, was joined by Kara Sowles Deloss, who
runs the GitHub Accelerator and other
programs, and Fiona Krakenbürger of the Sovereign Tech
Fund. They discussed their respective
approaches to finding and funding Open Source.
This session is for you if you are:
an Open Source maintainer who wants to learn about new funding programs
a decision maker at a company who wants to support Open Source
a digital infrastructure policy maker in government
a developer with an interest in Open Source sustainability
Kara Sowles Deloss is a Senior
Open Source Program Manager at GitHub. She created Maintainer Month, organized
GitHub’s Maintainer Summit, and led the inaugural cohort of the GitHub
Accelerator. Prior to GitHub she was a community leader at Puppet for many years.
Fiona Krakenbürger co-founded the
Sovereign Tech Fund, a program dedicated to Open Source infrastructure. Her
background is in Open Source funding in Berlin and Washington D.C. She has
managed funds at the intersection of technology and human rights, as well as
privacy, censorship circumvention and infrastructure.
Chad Whitacre is Head of Open Source at Sentry
and a core contributor to FOSS Funders, an industry working group making it
weird for companies not to support Open Source. He has held roles as a
software engineer and engineering manager. He founded Gittip (Gratipay), an
Open Source crowdfunding startup, and co-founded the SustainOSS conference.
