Episode 68: Introducing FundOSS.org: A new way of funding open source, by Gitcoin x Sustain

Panelists Pia Mancini | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Guest
Kevin Owocki Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! This is a
special edition episode we are doing today. We have the most
enthusiastic guest and returning champion Kevin Owocki with us to
talk about quadratic/democratic funding, which is a completely new
concept, and how we're using it in FundOSS. What is FundOSS? Well,
we have a really exciting announcement to make today, so be sure to
listen. We are discussing what the fund is and how it works. Also,
we will talk about funding open source maintainers and doing it a
new way with more money, some of which is coming out of Sustain.
Download this episode now to find out what this excitement is all
about! [00:01:25] Kevin starts off by explaining the project they
are working on called FundOSS.org. We also learn how this is
different from traditional matching that happens. [00:06:10] Pia
tells us why they are doing this and the main benefits, and Kevin
tells us about the crowdfunding campaign and how much money they
raised over a two week period. [00:08:47] Kevin explains quadratic
funding, a pilot they did, and Bitcoin grants. [00:10:47] Pia asks
Kevin to talk a little bit about the funding of the commons and the
radical markets framework to it. He mentions a paper written about
quadratic funding. [00:14:38] Alyssa asks Kevin to talk about how
collectives that are participating can make this a successful
campaign for themselves and their budgeting, and the projects that
may not be as visible what they can do. [00:16:20] Pia tells us
about how Sustain put money towards this fund, how they got to that
decision, and what enabled them to do this. [00:17:58] Kevin tells
us all the other large sponsors of the work. [00:20:06] Richard
wonders who is funding this since they are all here, and if there
is an amount of that matching fund that goes towards the owners.
Alyssa tells us this is a joint venture with Gitcoin integrating
with open source collective. [00:23:00] Richard wonders if any of
the money goes towards dependencies or is it only towards really
cool project TM, and Alyssa explains. [0025:32] Kevin addresses
Richard’s point about only the popular projects getting funded and
that being a problem. [00:26:34] Richard tells us everywhere you
can follow Kevin on the internet and Alyssa shares one final point
about call to actions. Spotlight [00:28:57] Pia’s spotlight is
Zanga.tech. [00:29:41] Kevin’s spotlight is Ethereum. [00:30:43]
Alyssa’s spotlight is thanking a few people from FundOSS, Zach
Herring, Sanchay Mittal, and Octavian Todirut. [00:31:24] Richard’s
spotlight is the Low Resource Languages GitHub repo's links. Quotes
[00:10:37] “So we’re really trying to adjust the behaviors in the
ecosystem to move more towards working on the digital
infrastructure that people care about as opposed to projects with
private gain associated with them.” [00:11:11] “From what I
understand is that public goods, which are goods that are
non-excludable in non-rival risks. So, things like clean air, clean
water, privacy, open source software is a public good, suffer from
something called a free rider problem, which is basically like well
this good is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, why should I support
it, why should I give it my all? There’s no paywall for open source
software.” [00:13:37] “I think it’s just as important that we have
a broad sense of distribution of those projects that people don’t
know about.” [00:22:51] “Trust the open street maps person to know
all about geographies.” Links Kevin Owocki Twitter
(https://twitter.com/search?q=%23kevinowocki) Kevin Owocki Website
(https://owocki.com/) FundOSS.org (https://fundoss.org/) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 50-Gitcoin, Quadratic Funding, and how Crypto can
sustain Open Source with guest Kevin Owocki
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/50) Gitcoin (https://gitcoin.co/) A
Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods- by Vitalik Buterin, Zoe
Hitzig, E.Glen Weyl (https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06421) Open
Collective Fund OSS (https://opencollective.com/fundoss) Gitcoin-
WTF is Quadratic Funding-video (https://wtfisqf.com/) Zanga.tech
(https://zanga.tech/?platform=macos) Ethereum
(https://ethereum.org/en/) Zach Herring Twitter
(https://twitter.com/zherring) Low Resource Languages-GitHub
(https://github.com/RichardLitt/low-resource-languages) 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 at Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Kevin Owocki.