Who Pays for Open Source?
summary
Major open source work is funded and executed largely by companies, not just volunteers: 50% of Apache committers report paid work, Drupal reports 69% sponsored code in 2020, and the Linux kernel shows ~85% corporate-paid code in 2018. Foundations supply legal counsel, trademarks, cloud credits and conference infrastructure; Conservancy averages ≈$2M income, Apache ≈$1–2M, Eclipse ≈$4M, while Linux Foundation reports ≈$100M income and ≈$60M net assets (2019), with corporate platinum tiers at ~$250–500k.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction to open source funding
- 3:09What is open source?
- 7:16Who funds open source work?
- 14:29Role of FOSS foundations
- 17:19Foundation funding models
- 23:37Apache Software Foundation finances
- 27:53Eclipse Foundation overview
- 31:25Linux Foundation scale and funding
- 36:39Corporate involvement in foundations
- 39:33Importance of governance and community
- 40:58Q&A on open source investments
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