Allocate a documented share of our investments to support open source projects under European governance or under a neutral foundation#

What this is, concretely#

This commitment consists of complementing your equity investment approach with a complementary direct-support approach to open source projects under European governance or under a neutral multi-vendor foundation. The share allocated — a fraction of your assets under management or an absolute amount — can take several forms: donations to strategic foundations (NLnet, Linux Foundation Europe, Eclipse Foundation, Document Foundation, Codeberg e.V.), funding programmes of paid maintainers on critical European bricks, multi-year support contracts for open source projects which are not themselves companies likely to raise venture capital (typically, neutral foundation projects whose governance forbids appropriation by an investor).

The commitment recognises that not everything is fundable through venture capital. A critical cryptographic library, a DNS encryption project, an open-format standard, an essential development tool: these structuring bricks need lasting funding but are not companies. Without specific support from funders, they depend on the goodwill of individual donors and volunteer contributors, which is not tenable in the long run.

The commitment includes an annual public statement of the approach: amount allocated, recipients, reasoning.

Why this commitment matters#

The manifesto devotes thesis 8 to this dimension: “technological autonomy rests less on licenses than on people: without a critical mass of paid maintainers keeping the critical bricks alive, free software becomes a technical debt funded by people other than us.” And thesis 11 follows: “a serious European digital sovereignty policy is recognised by its investment in foundations, maintainers, and distribution infrastructures.”

The funding market, in Europe as elsewhere, is massively oriented towards venture capital on high-growth companies. Software-infrastructure bricks that do not themselves generate VC-able growth are structurally underfunded. This is one of the most structuring paradoxes of the open source ecosystem: the bricks most critical to the digital economy are often the worst funded. OpenSSL is the historic example, whose funding fragility before the Heartbleed crisis in 2014 alarmed the entire industry; the lessons were partially drawn through the creation of the Core Infrastructure Initiative, but the underlying dynamic remains.

For an investor, this complementary commitment has several virtues. It protects the value of the existing portfolio: the companies in your portfolio typically depend on these underfunded bricks, whose failure would weaken them. It sets you apart in a competitive market: the “sovereignty” investment thesis is becoming a positioning marker. It contributes to building a European ecosystem from which future investment opportunities will emerge.

A concrete example#

A European thematic VC fund (European technological sovereignty) with 220 million euros under management takes this commitment in April 2026 with an 18-month horizon. The fund’s leadership sets a target of 0.5% of assets under management allocated over three years to non-VC-able open source projects, i.e. 1.1 million euros distributed over 36 months (about 367,000 euros per year).

The breakdown is set in concertation with a technical committee made up of recognised European maintainers. Multi-year support of 80,000 euros per year is provided to NLnet Labs (which maintains critical DNS infrastructure). 60,000 euros per year go to the Document Foundation (LibreOffice). 50,000 euros per year fund a programme of paid European maintainers on critical cryptographic libraries, in partnership with Sovereign Tech Fund. 100,000 euros per year are allocated to a “European open source infrastructure” call for projects managed by the fund with an independent jury. 77,000 euros per year form a reserve for one-off support in response to emergencies (for example, emergency funding of a maintainer at risk of burn-out on a critical brick).

The fund publishes each year a detailed public report on the allocation and the recipients. The approach is integrated into the fund’s commercial documentation and into its presentations to LPs, and constitutes a differentiating argument in the raising of its next fund.

Anti-pattern to avoid#

A one-off, symbolic donation communicated on social media but not renewed does not fulfil the commitment, which presupposes a documented and lasting share. Total concentration on a single visible project (marketing logic) rather than diffuse support to several critical bricks misses the systemic goal. A vague phrasing (“we support the European open source ecosystem”) without figures or named recipients does not constitute a tenable declaration.

Success indicators#

By the 18-month horizon, you can reasonably consider this commitment fulfilled if you have set a numerical share of assets under management or an absolute amount allocated annually, if the contributions have been made to at least three distinct recipients representative of the ecosystem, if the approach is publicly documented, and if an annual renewal procedure is defined.

→ Documented in the dossier#

• Family 2 — Foundations and jurisdiction
• Family 4 — Contribution concentration
• Family 5 — Positive counter-examples

JSON schema category: funding. Default horizon: 18 months. Applicable to: businesses, public administrations, foundations.