Advocate seeks $1B for open source code project maintainers

IT Ops Query

Tobie Langel is Principal and Managing Partner at UnlockOpen, a consulting firm in Geneva that advises clients on working with the open tech ecosystem. Langel is a passionate advocate for open source, and in February, he gave a presentation at the­ State of Open Conference in London urging funding for open source maintainers.

Here, he discusses the distinction between open source development and open source maintenance, why open source sustainability issues persist and why $1 billion or even $10 billion per year isn't too much to ask of the global tech industry to fund open source maintenance -- especially in an age of vulnerabilities such as log4shell and ongoing software supply chain attacks.