Project Economics: A case study with Open Web Docs
summary
Open Web Docs raised more than $3m and now budgets roughly $600–800k a year to fund a small global staff, contractors and ops, using Open Collective as fiscal host to hire full time locally-compliant waged employment. Work focuses on the mdn content repository and a cc0 browser-compatibility data pipeline that they automated with Sovereign Tech Fund support. Funding strategy targets ~50% corporate memberships, ~35% project grants and smaller individual donations.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction and team
- 1:44Why documentation matters
- 6:22Open Web Docs mission
- 10:37Browser compatibility data
- 12:20Governance and funding model
- 14:48Selling documentation as infrastructure
- 17:59Documentation’s role in learning
- 20:05Making the economic case
- 23:37Diversifying fundraising sources
- 27:11Balancing funding for sustainability
- 30:24Licensing and partnerships
- 31:50Q&A and closing
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