Keynote: Running the internet, under-funded and under-staffed?

Running the internet, under-funded and under-staffed? How to achieve a sustainable open source ecosystem Drupal Mountain Camp, March 8 2024 | Jutta Horstmann | CEO, Mailvelope

vs. Luca Florio, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Economic Sustainability The project has funding to continue operations

Economic Sustainability The project has funding to continue operations for years to come.

Source: https://xkcd.com/2347

Credit: Leena Snidate / Codenomicon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

“So the mystery is not that a few overworked volunteers missed this bug; the mystery is why it hasn’t happened more often.” – Steve Marquess, OpenSSL

10 years after

And still… ● 96% of the surveyed codebases included OSS ● 77% of the code in the codebases was OSS ● 49% of code bases included OSS that had had no developer activity in the past two years – Synopsys ‘24 Open Source Security Report (audited > 1,700 codebases across 17 industries, source) ● 60% of open source maintainers describe themselves as “unpaid hobbyists.” ● 44% of all maintainers said they are the only person maintaining a project. – Tidelift study 2023, https://thenewstack.io/open-source-needs-maintainers-b ut-how-can-they-get-paid

The Economics of Open Source

Voluntary, unpaid work

Voluntary, unpaid work

Lack of contributors Lack of funds Vicious cycle Lack of business / product development

Sustaining F/OSS: Business and Funding Models

Unrestricted funds Dual licensing / paid product Paid services Ads Donations Awards Crowdinvesting Investment / VC Grants Crowdfunding Universal Basic Income Paid internship Restricted funds High effort beyond product work Sponsorship Paid contributor Low effort beyond product work

Non-profit funding models A developer gets paid The project receives funds ● Universal Basic Income ● Grants ● Paid internship ● Awards ● Paid contributor / maintainer ● Crowdfunding ● Sponsorship ● Donations

For-profit business models Paid services Paid product / dual licensing ● Consulting ● Freemium ● Training ● Open Core ● Custom development ● Software as a service (SaaS) ● Certifications ● Packaging / Deployment ● Hosting ● eyeo / ABP case → Product sales finance the product development → Non-product work finances the product development

Examples

Adblock Plus What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by Browser extension Block ads, tracking, malware GPL Adblock Inc (subsidiary of eyeo GmbH) Available since 2006 Funded by ● Ads: eyeo’s Acceptable Ads revenue ● Freemium ● Donations

Drupal What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by CMS / DXP Framework for web content publishing GPL Community Available since 2001 Funded by ● ● ● ● ● Donations Grants (Drupal association) Sponsorships Paid contributors Paid services

GnuPG What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by: Crypto engine implementing PGP standard Encrypt & signs data and communications; key management system GPL Werner Koch / g10 Code GmbH Available since 1997 Funded by ● ● ● ● Public funds (Germany, for GPG4Win and VS-Desktop) Crowdfunding Donations (by larger companies like Stripe, Facebook) Paid services (g10 Code GmbH)

Mailvelope What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by Browser extension Encrypt webmail communications AGPL Thomas Oberndörfer, Mailvelope GmbH Available since 2012 Funded by ● Grants ● Paid subscriptions (Mailvelope Business)

Mozilla Firefox What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by Browser Encrypt webmail communications Mozilla Public License (MPL) Mozilla Foundation & Mozilla Corporation Available since 2004 Funded by ● Donations (Mozilla Foundation) ● Paid services / Ads (Mozilla Corporation, 81% (2022) from Google paying for making it the default search engine)

MySQL What is it? What does it do? License: Developed by Database Management System Stores and manages information in databases GPL and proprietary MySQL AB Available since 1995 Funded by ● Donations (Mozilla Foundation) ● Paid product via dual licensing

Learnings Longevity built on ● keeping it small ● finding a profitable paid services business model ● building a profitable paid services ecosystem ● dual licensing ● securing (unrestricted) grants ● securing (large) donations

Economic Sustainability The project has funding to continue operations for years to come.

Beware! ● Tip jars / Gig economy ● Restricted funds ● Short-term grants ● Grant writing overhead ● Donation taxation Tomwsulcer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

How about… funding Open Source maintainers with public money from (corporate) taxes? applying licensing that requires you to pay money when you build commercial tooling on top of OSS?

International Women’s Day What Open Source sustainability means for us Source: https://www.acquia.com/blog/series/women-of-drupal

< 10% female contributors to Open Source repositories Sources: https://www.toptal.com/open-source/is-open-source-open-to-women, https://community.sap.com/t5/open-source-blogs/women-in-open-source/ba-p/13508760, https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2022/12/09963732/1Iz0RZM9Wbm

Open Source sustainability enables diversity. Source: Created by Midjourney

Thank you! Jutta Horstmann Mailvelope GmbH CEO, Mailvelope GmbH https://www.mailvelope.com jutta@mailvelope.com @mailvelope (X, Mastodon) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhorstmann/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/mailvelope/ @smphr (Mastodon) PGP: 89D1 69A3 ECAD CA3D A4E6 F3A7 DFA4 EE0F 9113 4859