Foundations can also facilitate impact through diverse strategies, including mentorship, recognition, and community support, by providing key performance indicators that enable business owners to measure the effect of initiatives and informed investment decisions. “Citing a significant chunk of the budget going towards legacy funding is a key takeaway from our experience,” notes Brian Proffitt, senior program manager for community outreach at Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office. “For Crimson Hat, fostering a healthy and thriving free and open-source software ecosystem involves supporting the numerous foundations within it, ensuring that as many tasks as possible remain vibrant and strong,” he explains.
As open-source maintainer Seth Michael Larson believes, fostering open supply success involves “providing full-time staffing at non-profit foundations to work on diverse aspects of the ecosystem with a comprehensive scope.” This approach could help bridge gaps in security, process, documentation, releases, and governance without undermining individual contributors’ incentives to continue working independently.
Despite the importance of open-source initiatives, Suehle notes that several crucial projects are reluctant to reside within a foundation due to various reasons. The need to develop effective solutions to support those in need is paramount. She emphasizes the importance of exploring various approaches to tackle this complex issue, highlighting the efforts made by numerous initiatives and organizations throughout history, such as?
