The Future of Open Source: The State of Sustainability

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

About the participantsAbout the participants

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.