CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, Feb 25, 2026 ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/968ZZyDWcZQ/maxresdefault.jpg) 🔗 **Source:** [CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, Feb 25, 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=968ZZyDWcZQ) Okay, there we go. >> Okay, nice. Yes, I'm happy to facilitate Don. Um, so thank you everyone for being here and uh Garrick especially for doing the last minute presentation um call and and accepting to to come and uh discuss with us. So we are very um very interested in the work that you're doing with um Johan and um Kevin. Is it is that right? Um and so yeah. >> Yeah. Where do you want me to start? At the end with what we are finding or at the beginning of how we designed the this research study and what kind of drove us to explore the funding in open source. >> I would love to hear about the motivation first I think. Um but let me know if others disagree. >> Yeah. So, Johan, Kevin, I we've been around open source for several years and I know Zirkcon from going to the sustain OSS events back when they were being hosted. And so, sustainability of open source and funding has been something we care about. And we did a study uh that we presented last year at Fazdam on what maintainers are currently saying they need because we've had this conversation in the sustainoss group. We've had it across the foundations in the open source projects everywhere. way of talking about what this is but when you look at the academic literature it's absent and it was not documented in a way that academics can build on it. So we went out we interviewed maintainers and heard back that yes funding is important but we also need all these other things. We need to build that human infrastructure is what we called it. So that we have the people and they have the skills and time to focus on the things and we we not always need money. We also need other things. So that's what we found out last year. We published that. That's all good. And then we wanted to swap onto the other side. So that's the starting point of the current study that I'm talking about today of what does it look like from the funer perspective. We wanted to understand what is it that they are looking for when selecting. I'll show you our research um the interview questions actually because that is the instrument that we used and Here I'm sharing my screen so you can see this. So you know exactly what we asked the the funders. Um I got an safety notification. Is sharing working for you all? >> Yes. >> Excellent. So, of course, we wanted to know first who they are so we can capture the different nuances and context that they're coming from. Um, we asked at a very high level what does the funding landscape currently look like because we wanted to map out what um is available to maintainers to open source projects. And one of the insights that I found really interesting is there is funding available in the US in Europe but then outside of that it becomes very sparse. We didn't find a lot of or any funders to talk to outside of the US and uh Europe. I reached out to my contacts in South America, in Africa, in Asia and I asked what is available on your continent? What do you know of? And I didn't get any referrals. I didn't get any connections because they said, you know, all that money is in the US and in Europe. So that is something I found really interesting. And if you know of of funding sources that are available, I I think there are starting to to be a push for it, but it's really not established. Um so or or if it is established, it's not being perceived or known even to the people who live on those continents. So that is a gap that I found really interesting. Then we have we asked about selection. So, how do you decide which open source projects to fund? And could you expand on that selection criteria you have? Which metrics or signals, if any, are using to in the selection process? Because we wanted to know from a maintainer perspective, what could the maintainers, the projects do to be noticed to be selected for funding? And then on the and I'll talk about what we found here because um the short of it is it depends more on the relationships funders and maintainers develop than objective metrics. Um that is also something that I found really interesting and it's more of a finger in the air uh approach that many funders are currently taking. Um impact we have we wanted to know okay so funders are giving money or resources or support um and we talked to many different funding um we had a very loose definition anyone who is supporting open source whether um it is some organization like the sovereign tech agency Alpha Omega. We talked with foundations like Eclipse. Um we also in the study still went back to some maintainers and said, "Hey, we've heard from funders. Can you help match this? Is this your experience?" Also uh so when that funding is made the funders usually have a source of that funding and they need to report up and secure those funds again. And so how do you track impact? How do you justify getting that funding again to give to open source? So how do you track that? What metrics do you use and how do you report that? So that's on that impact. And then in that already we had lots of conversations and we didn't have time to ask many more questions. So we just asked if we had any blind spots, if there's anything else that we didn't cover that we needed to know about and uh if there was anything that we could produce out of the research that funders would find helpful and if they can make any new introduction. So, so that's the research instrument, the interview protocol that we used. And I'm I'm going to pause here. I I really enjoy interactive conversations more so than me talking to a webcam. So, I'm going to pause here and give you all a chance to ask questions, comment on what you're seeing, whatever comes to mind. Thank you, Garrick. I very much appreciate the length of the questions because that's what I found as well is that we would put together 10 15 questions and then would maybe get to five um properly and of course we don't want to take too much time of their daily time. So, I really appreciate how it's I think focusing on the things that you really want to get get from and um they seem to evade but as but focused enough so that people can answer. Um I'm really interested in the results. >> Yeah, thank you Adrian. And when you say they're vague in academic terms, when I think about creating an interview protocol, I want to avoid leading questions and I want to keep them open where I ask, hey, what comes to mind when I say this? And then, can you give examples? Can you talk about this? so that I don't get a specific answer I'm expecting, but I'm just opening up the conversation. And so when it comes across as vague, it's really because it's designed to be an open question, Alexand. >> Uh yes. Uh yeah, first thanks thanks for these insights. I'm also really interested in the results. uh when you talked about um basically the countries or regions which uh provide funding uh opportunities for maintainers um I thought about uh one initiative which I stepped over which is called floss fund maybe you have heard about it or probably you have heard about it and now I I quickly opened it and uh it's somehow uh related to India so it says something like started in 2024 at Seruda Floss Fun blah blah blah. So apparently uh there is an initiative um also outside uh Europe and the US which came into my mind. So maybe that's uh kind of helpful for your for your uh data collection. Yeah, thank you for bringing up floss fund and the the I think there is a uh perception um that we need to promote these initiatives um more. So this one is started a little over a year ago and we ran these interviews around that time. So I don't there was enough time to >> y >> really be known at that time. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Paul um yeah I think the questions are great from my perspective. I think um I might suggest one though that I think could help flesh out uh the context and selection a little bit and also as bearing on some level for impact. Um because we sometimes I think tend to treat funding as a panacea as you know just a kind of uh a very general thing but um different funders have different sort of if you like strategic goals or things they want to set out to do um be it you know improve resilience or cyber security and um or you know be more oriented to community funding and certainly from the perspective of SDA we've had occasions when we funding different things and so the measurement of the impact is obviously different, right? Um, and maybe it's worth considering a question at the kind of getting to know the participant uh section around like what is the overall goal of your organization or your funding and you'll probably end up with I imagine like some very broadly sketched things about like strengthening the ecosystem um or something like that but perhaps the space to just kind of drill that down a little bit and get a bit more specific could help. >> Yeah. And from running these interviews, everyone talks about their objectives and their goals. Whether it is in the context or no later than by the time we talk about selecting, there's a clarification that happens. We are selecting because this is what we want to do and achieve. So yes absolutely that is an important consideration and in the interview data we have captured that uh even without having a dedicated question for it which is always a balance um how many questions do you put in interview protocol and then does it start getting repetitive. So good good call out that the objectives matter and they matter so much that they come out in the way the questions are answered anyway. So I I'm just sharing my experience here so that hopefully this helps someone if if you want to do something similar in the future or um so that you understand how we arrived at our results. So here here's where we went next. We we did about 20 interviews or so and there what one of the things that we heard from our interview participants is that there is not a lot of agreement across the industry across the different funders on how to select how to measure that. There are some issues around the popular and most widely used than known projects capture the funding whereas lesser known ones are are um having a harder time to attract support. Um and so we heard that there is a need for coordination, more coordination, more collaboration between the funders and for for to foster that we invited our interview participants to a workshop at FOSDM and we also invited a few others that are in this space that we didn't get to interview. And then the second reason we brought everyone together to talk about our findings is from a research perspective to validate that what we are synthesizing from the interviews what we are seeing makes sense that it holds up to the experience and also to start a conversation around because there is so much variability just to have a conversation. So we created this workshop brief and in our analysis we focused on impact tracking impact reporting the that piece of our interviews. So we captured a lot of things but to keep the conversation focused we're really focusing on the funding impact and I want to highlight a few themes. Quick shout out to our sponsors. Rice is where Johan works. Kraton is where Kevin works and Betrogia is where I worked. And then here's what we found. So for the vision and strategy of the funer that this is what Paul was uh asking about. This is so important on what the strategic direction is that it influences how the impact is tracked and reported because that shapes the lens that funders are looking through and what they're trying to accomplish. And so when it comes to the impact logic is what we call it. It is taking that vision and strategy and creating a frame around it on these are the kinds of things that we are affecting. So if it is a organization that focuses on improving security, they would be looking at metrics or stories around finding vulnerabilities, getting them closed, how long it takes, avoiding disastrous outcomes and so on and so forth or refactoring, simplifying architecture. Uh if the story is around we want to secure our foundation then it is things about how do we find what is in our foundation? How do we make sure we capture broad categories? And a lot of it boils down to stories because the um whatever metrics or numbers that we can talk about they don't tell a compelling enough story. oftent times when especially when it's reported out to those who control the purse strings it is the stories the emotional side to this that actually allows for funding to continue to flow. Um we also found this theory of change and one of the problems is we want to improve it to avoid bad outcomes and in the absence of bad outcomes what can we report about. Um so that is a challenge that we heard about time and time again. So, so that is the the setup. When it then comes down to operationalizing the impact, how do you break it down into something that you can put a number to and that you can measure? Uh it is going towards the the goal. Um easy to justify, relatively straightforward. Uh but there there are limitations for for this because the those metrics are not always that the metrics that we want to have are not always easy to capture or available. Um and so that makes it often systematically undermeasured. Um, as a result of that difficulty, we have already talked about uh things that didn't go wrong. Being able to measure something that didn't happen is hard. Uh, and that so that's a challenge. Not that we have a solution to this, but we are just capturing this as a challenge. And then considering funding structures, this is also where depending on how the support is given, whether it's a grant, a contract, a stipen, whether it has milestones or not, whether it's work for hire, the it builds in reporting cycles. And one of the things that I thought seemed to work really well and I've heard a few times is when the project or the maintainers are asked to write monthly summaries. Here is what we did. Here's what the funding allowed us to do. Here is the improvements that we made. And so that creates a track record that we can point back to. And then in a annual or bannual or whatever reporting cycle a bigger report can be assembled from those smaller monthly reports. It also creates check-in points and transparency. talking about about that one. There's also something we heard about with regards to the relationship between the one who gives the money and the one who receives the money. And it can that there can be an effect where the projects or maintainers that receive funding are starting to feel pressure because they received funding. And then if they perceive not meeting deadlines, not being able to do the things that they wanted to do because life happens, whatever, then they become silent. And so to foster a continuous flow of information, one thing that seems promising is to put projects that are being funded into cohorts and they can talks amongst the peers and then the funer just based on that chatter and the check-ins where the peers are more likely to ask each other for advice or help than go to the perceived uh overlord where the power differential is at least perceived. Um it it allows to capture misalignments or issues earlier and to respond faster. So that is something I found interesting to um group the u recipients into cohorts. When we talk about types of impact this is how the projects were improved whether it is we have new CI/CD pipeline integrations more automated testing we have uh reduced time to close pull requests um or we are um reducing the backlog. We bringing more people in. we are able to implement new features whatever it is. So that that is um also um adoption was another type of impact that we heard about where some projects say we are more widely used or funders said one of the things I want to have is because we fund projects and they improve that they also become more widely used and have a more positive impact in the ecosystem because we want to leverage where we spend the money on projects. We want to impact not just current users but also more users and grow that adoption. Um that's this point about downstream use and adoption innovation and public good. There are also funders who are not just about maintenance funding which is a fairly new concept from what we hear. Uh traditionally there was more funding available for developing new features for fixing things that have had gone wrong and then in the last years maintain maintenance funding has become available and that's still a rather new thing. creating things, driving innovation, doing something for the public good are also impacts that um that funders care about. U measurement approach um some of you have written a fantastic paper what was it now two years ago about quantitive qualitative and how to approach that. So we heard many of those themes again here. Uh so I I don't want to talk too much about that since I you already have fantastic resource on that. Um I don't think we had anything new or in um something surprising in here that I want to highlight the impact reporting though this is where we asked okay so how do you report out and a lot of the funders have annual reports that they put out and that helps secure additional funding. or show the impact that the funders had. Uh in the reporting, some metrics are important, but really that narrative and the key message and tying it together into here's what we set out as a funding agency to do and these are all the things that we have done and this is the positive impact that we have and the larger picture how that affects the ecosystem. Those are good stories to tell but really difficult to put into numbers. And then also the target audience is often considered because if it is a policy maker government, they need to hear different things than if it is private corporate um investors who care more about securing the foundation of their own esbomb. Whereas the governments they care more about the public good and innovation and driving the economy forward as a whole. So that is the summary of the things that we found in the interviews. um one of the so I I can pause here because I then have also after the workshop we had some reflections that we shared at Fosdom that I can talk about but I wanted to pause here and now that we've gone through this impact brief which I'm also happy to share with you all if you're interested >> I I might jump in quickly to ask a question. Um maybe maybe I I didn't hear it exactly but you had this um paragraph about down downstream impact or something like that. I think section four or something. Um could you quickly summarize again because I didn't get that point completely. Um what did the people talk about um the impact of basically improvements or funding um when it comes to downstream effects um kind of rippling through the ecosystem >> uh this 4.3 this section >> so this is in the section of types of impact >> and we had funders that wanted to make a positive impact in a certain domain or field or use cases and by so so for example I I'll just make this up if the goal was to improve for reporters that they can securely do reporting on the ground in situations where the conversations and communication needs to be secured. If if that is the context and then the funer goes and funds open source projects because they believe these are the technologies that reporters need in crisis environments where they are being prosecuted whatever and it keeps them safe. then funding the open source project is all good and well but they want to see that reporters actually take up the tools and start using them because that is the ultimate outcome that they are going for. The technology is just the means >> to an end. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yeah, you're welcome. So th this was especially interesting for technology for good. the digital public goods um alliance associated kind of funding mechanisms where we are creating technology not just to to improve the technology but to drive social impact. Uh Circon is asking does the funding increase the adoption in some cases because a project received funding. Now there are agencies, there are governments, there are >> I I was trying to clarify what Alexandros was uh asking. Let's say that uh I think that was one of the key points u metrics that uh that you are interested in. So I was just trying to reply to Alexandra H but this adoption part is uh I think critical for all of us right that uh this we were just discussing the practitioners guide as well that over over there also that we are wondering whether we can have a metric for adoption uh I think the best one that we have ecosystems for instance is doing a good job over there uh do you have any um uh do you have any let's say methods or recommendations to measure that adoption. Is there any conversation about that? >> Um, a lot of it is because the maintainers know who is taking on a project if they hear about it, especially if there is a like a migration project and people come and ask for help. Um so it's anecdotal. I know there is scarf which is a technical solution to measure downloads and can be embedded in the software to also have metrics on actual usage but that's that's about the extent of it. But to to build on on that, does funding increase adoption? Yes. When a project has a funer, there are users, agencies or um governments that see this funding as an endorsement and now they are able to justify to their stakeholders that yes, we can build on this because it is recognized as a good solution and has received funding from whatever funding agency. Um, so it it can kickstart an adoption cycle or sometimes we have open- source technologies that are developed in one context by one country by one municipality and building a coalition of others that come in and share. A funer can help facilitate that process also. That's also something we have seen. G, I do have a question, but I was wondering if it's maybe better to pose it at the end because I think it's a general question. Um, or I was wondering if if there's anything else you wanted to present. >> Um, I'm happy to stop at any time. Um I'm also happy to share um the early insights the kind of what we learned from the workshop but I think this conversation is really good and helpful already and if there are other agenda items I'm happy to just call it good because you can watch this also on the fosum recording. >> We don't really have any agenda items but I can I can tell you my question and then you can decide whether now is the good time to answer it. I was wondering if um any of the funders that you interviewed had experience funding things other than open source. So maybe research institutions um I don't know maybe individuals but not in this opensource project sense and whether they they reflected on some of the differences that there is in funding open source versus I don't know maybe the bigger funds or when it's and it's not as distributed as here. Um yeah but if if not then maybe the these people were experts in open source and didn't do funding. uh in other domains. >> Yeah. So we we heard about funding being available for open source from general funders like uh libraries or science funders that put in open source as a requirement or they fund a certain open source tool because it helps several other of their projects engagements. So we heard about those opportunities but they are not the focus that we had and we did not specifically interview those I want to call them adjacent funders that are open source adjacent but they're not dedicated to open source. So our interview partners were dedicated or had a specific branch focused on open source and we only asked about that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah, happy to chat more. >> I also know we like to end early and we only have 10 minutes left. >> Does anyone have any other questions or discussion points for Garrick? I would add if you could uh if you want to drop a few links uh like the the document that you put in the chat uh it's not a link so I can't put it in the notes but maybe if you could drop a few links in the notes we already linked to your posam talk but that would be that would be helpful >> okay yeah I will make the document available as a Google um drive link Perfect. Thank you so much. >> I did also have a couple of reminders. Um, if you think of any more questions for Gay, we still have time, so we can come back to that. Um, but we have a couple of CFPs that are open. So, the Apache Software Foundation's Community Over Code, which is going to be in October in Glasgow, Scotland. The CFP deadline is March 20th. So, that's uh coming up in a couple of weeks. uh All Things Open, which is in Raleigh in October. The CFP deadline is March 31st. So, I would encourage you if you're interested in attending either of those events to um submit into the call for proposals. And I don't know if anybody else has any reminders, other open CFPs, interesting events coming up. Okay. Anybody think of any final questions for Garch? >> Maybe just on when you're planning to publish Gagor. Is is this going to be a scientific article? >> Yes, >> we are going to um I think the submission deadline is here end of March. So it will be published in a scientific venue. Um I don't remember what the timeline is when it would be finally published but we're working on it. >> Okay. Nice. Oh and actually another thing that came to mind is you you I think you said that when they're selecting open source projects many times it actually depends on the relationship that they have with the uh maintainers um or the relationships they had beforehand with the maintainers um to matter more rather than the metrics. And I was wondering if the funders reflected on whether that's a good or bad thing or whether they would want to change that or just they don't know how to change that. >> Yeah, that was so that didn't really come out in the interviews. That was something we learned during the workshop when we were all sitting together and in the conversation of examples. It just like, oh, there's a pattern that we have personal relationships and it makes funding more difficult to be sustainable because when someone leaves on either side whether within the funer and they had all the personal relationships and contact and they knew who to talk to etc. uh even if they leave behind the contact list those personal relationships need to be established again or if someone in uh in the projects leaves so it is that that was the sense that I got from the conversation it makes the system as it is right now fragile >> and is there a way to change it we didn't have a solution on hand it is something that we need to think about and how can it be done differently? >> Yeah. And I'm guessing there's also this aspect of if they if they maybe had enough um participants who are applying um and then maybe then the the metric site can come come out and so that there if there's a 100 applications to go through then the metrics would come forward. Maybe it's the case that since there's this mismatch between people who need the funding not finding these funders, then it kind of then is um left to those who who know about it and have the relationships with the funders. >> Yeah. Yeah. There there's a couple dynamics um at play that we can talk about. One is the amount of effort that is required to apply for funding where maintainers say, "Hey, I'm I'm just not even going to bother." So unless they already have a personal relationship, some will not apply to a program that tries to be as objective as possible. So what that then incentivizes is those who apply for it. They have a grant writer or someone who is really dedicated to going after this funding, but they may not be the ones who actually do the work, who benefit the open source projects and their work on securing the funding evaporates without impacting the open source that actually needed the funding to begin with. So those are concerns and why these personal trust relationships right now are so important or seen as important. Like I said, I don't have a good solution for it. It's okay. Thank you, Gar. Thank you so much for the talk. If Okay, Cirin, go ahead. Yeah, one one last thing that I could uh mention is that it would be interesting to know what is the for instance uh approved rejected uh ratio let's say how many people uh submit to the fund and how many of them are being approved let's say um the ratio is usually was very low for instance for for the funds that I was uh that when I was chatting let's say for I think open technology fund it was like 5% um uh invest in infrastructure I think similar ratio etc. Do you know anything about that or do you collect that kind of information? That would be interesting to know. >> I agree. It's would be very interesting to know. >> Um but it was not focus of our study and we did not ask about it. >> All right. Yeah. Yep. >> Okay. Nice. Thank you so much, G. Um so we will meet in two weeks time. I'm contacting Amy Odono from Nominette and hoping that um she she can present for us. Um but if not, we'll be in touch um and figure out what the agenda is for for the next meeting. >> Thank you so much everyone. >> Yep. Thank you, G. Cheers. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having me. Have a good day. >> You too., CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, Feb 25, 2026, YouTube, 01kp8h220c108xw2r1drzbd58f.