Episode 175: Serkan Holat on Agile Public Funds

Guest Serkan Holat Panelists Richard Littauer | Leslie Hawthorn
Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk
about sustaining open source for the long haul. Richard and Leslie
are hosting today, and they’re very excited to welcome our special
guest, Serkan Holat, who’s a Freelance Software Developer, with
over 20 years of experience in researching finance, open source
ecosystems, and digital public goods. He advocates for financing
open source software with public money and setting up dedicated
public funds called Agile Public Funds. Today, we’ll discuss with
Serkan, the need to allocate funds to support and publish critical
open source software, the importance of sustainability on open
source software, and the lack of understanding of the industry’s
risk profile. Also, Serkan gives us all the details on an
experiment he recently started to increase awareness about using
public money to finance open source. Download this episode to hear
much more! [00:01:47] We start off with Serkan telling us how the
tax cause is going. He proposes introducing an open source tax on
proprietary software sales, with the revenue going to public funds
for distribution to the open source ecosystem. [00:06:11] Serkan
explains how he’s watched the space grow, and he talks about the
Digital Public Goods Alliance that recognizes open source software
as a new type of digital public good, and the Sovereign Tech Fund.
[00:08:35] Serkan tells us why there shouldn’t be any obligations
on the developers and what we should do. [00:10:23] We hear
Serkan’s thoughts on the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany, an
excellent initiative that he supports as a blueprint for other
nations to follow, but scalability will become an issue. [00:12:39]
Free Software Foundation Europe has a fantastic campaign. Serkan’s
explains the idea of using public sector collaboration. [00:13:56]
There’s a discussion on the challenges of implementing public
sector collaboration and there’s a suggestion of creating a social
contract to increase funding for open source software. [00:16:43]
What’s wrong with the market we currently have? Serkan elaborates
on this. [00:20:19] The conversation shifts to Richard, Leslie, and
Serkan touching on the role of security in financing open source
software, they discuss the allocations of funds to support and
publish open source software, the need for sustainability in open
source software, and the lack of understanding of the industry’s
risk profile. [00:28:41] Serkan shares his thoughts on how he’s
trying to convince software companies to produce open source
software. [00:30:31] Richard wonders how a tax on proprietary
software to help out open source communities, is going to lead to a
more equitable environment, or all people building open source
software. [00:32:45] Serkan advocates for the creation of public
funds to finance the open source ecosystem, and he’s been
experimenting with this approach for the past 15 months. He chooses
three projects from Open Collective each month and distributes
money based on their criticality score. [00:34:11] Find out where
you can follow Serkan and all his writings on the web. Quotes
[00:02:51] “My proposal on that area is to introduce an open source
software tax on proprietor software sales.” Spotlight [00:37:13]
Leslie’s spotlight is the Chaos Computer Club. [00:38:22] Richard’s
spotlight is the Feminist Bird Club, Northern Vermont chapter.
[00:39:04] Serkan’s spotlight is an announcement made by Minister
Alexandra van Huffelen, at the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2023.
Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS
Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Richard Littauer
Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Leslie Hawthorn Twitter (https://twitter.com/lhawthorn?lang=en)
Serkan Holat Twitter (https://twitter.com/coni2k?lang=en) Serkan
Holat LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/serkanholat/) Serkan
Holat Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@coni2k) Roads and Bridges:
The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal
(https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/)
Digital Public Goods Alliance (https://digitalpublicgoods.net/)
Sovereign Tech Fund (https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/) Open Source
Project Criticality Score-GitHub
(https://github.com/ossf/criticality_score) Open source public fund
experiment by Serkan Holat
(https://dev.to/coni2k/open-source-public-fund-experiment-lc8)
Ecosyste.ms (https://ecosyste.ms/) If it’s public money, make it
public code!-FOSDEM’23
(https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/public_money_public_code/)
Public Money? Public Code! Free Software Foundation Europe
(https://publiccode.eu/en/) Switch to open source alternatives in
Munich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux) Chaos Computer Club
(https://www.ccc.de/en/) Northern Vermont Feminist Bird Club-
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/fbc.nvt/) Dutch Digitalisation
Minister announces creation of an OSPO
(https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/dutch-digitalisation-minister-announces-ospo-creation)
Ministerial Address: Alexandra van Huffelen (YouTube)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTQEzKQFjXg&t=18080s) Credits
Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by
Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Serkan Holat.