Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund unveils a new program to fund maintainers of open source projects that’s expected to be up and running by year’s end.
Germany is getting ready to fund open source software maintainers, the unsung heroes who keep important open source infrastructure software up to date and free from bugs and security vulnerabilities, often receiving little to no financial compensation for their efforts.
If you’re of the ilk to complain about governments giving money away and what that means for taxpayers, the Germans — or at least their government — are doing this because it will be good for the economy, meaning they think it’ll make folks better able to pay their taxes rather just empty their pockets for the taxman. This is also why they’ve already spending a substantial amount of money to help fund over 40 FOSS projects.
“Open source infrastructure is the backbone of our digital world – and the work of the people who maintain it is essential to ensuring the security and availability of this global resource,” Mirko Swillus wrote in a blog that was published on Thursday. “They lead project development, review changes, manage community interactions, and tackle security issues.”
Swillus is program manager at Sovereign Tech Fund, and the blog was to announce fund’s new Fellowship for Maintainers program.
“With this new fellowship program, we’re directly investing in the people behind the code by paying maintainers of critical open source components for their work,” he wrote.
About Fellowship for Maintainers
The details of the new program are still a work in progress. STF is using information gleaned from a survey of 536 FOSS maintainers conducted back in March to help shape the program, that Swillus said will have three components as cornerstones:
- Impactful Work: There is no doubt that there is a substantial demand for supporting maintainers and maintenance work directly. This will be the guiding principle of the fellowship and complement the offerings of our general fund.
- Diverse Engagement Options: We plan to offer a range of ways maintainers can be engaged, with varying time commitments to suit different needs and situations.
- Mentorship and Growth: There is a specific demand for mentoring maintainers. The fellowship will be accompanied by an offering from STF and/or partners that supports the needs of the fellowship participants.
The timeline, according to Swillus, is to begin accepting applications by the end of September, with selected maintainers beginning their fellowships before the end of the year.
“We know there is plenty more we can learn from the maintainers as the program progresses,” he said. “That’s why we’re using an iterative approach and starting with a pilot program now in 2024. This allows us to refine the program as we go, evaluate it, and develop it over time. A pilot program also means that we’ll start with a relatively small number of maintainers.”
About Sovereign Tech Fund
Sovereign Tech Fund, which will be managing the fellowship, is a funding program of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. The fund’s purpose is to provide financial support to promote and secure basic open source technologies to make them more resilient to external attacks, and thus strengthen cyber security and resilience across the German economy. The open source projects that STF helps fund includes cURL, Drupal, Gnome, openSSH, systemd, and others.
The money that projects receive from STF is substantial. In 2022, the fund’s first year, it had a budget of 13 million euros, which rose to around 22 million euros in 2023. This year the fund is expected to have up to 16 million euros at its disposal.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
