Allocate a documented fraction of our software budget to direct funding of open source projects#
What this is, concretely#
This commitment consists of allocating each year a documented fraction of your software budget — a percentage of total SaaS and software licence budget, or an absolute amount — to direct funding of the open source projects you depend on. The available channels are many: direct sponsorship via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, Open Collective or Tidelift, donations to foundations (Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Document Foundation, NLnet Labs, Let’s Encrypt), paid contributions by your teams (time explicitly allocated and tracked), or commercial support contracts with companies that pay maintainers.
The commitment includes an annual public report of the funds disbursed. The transparency of this report is what distinguishes it from a one-off donation and gives it its signal value, both for the recipient projects (which can cite you) and for peers (who can take inspiration).
Why this commitment matters#
The manifesto devotes a whole thesis to this dimension. Thesis 8 states: “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.” Thesis 11 follows: “a serious European digital sovereignty policy is recognised by its investment in foundations, maintainers, and distribution infrastructures.”
The current situation is asymmetrical: tens of thousands of European organisations use PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, cURL, Linux, Python, Node.js daily, with no fraction of the economic value generated flowing back to those who maintain them. This asymmetry is not tenable in the long run — it exposes critical bricks to maintainer burn-out, capture by single sponsors, and gradual decay. The left-pad incident in March 2016 and the voluntary sabotage of colors.js and faker.js in January 2022 reminded us of the fragility of this balance.
At the individual scale of an organisation, the contribution may seem modest. At aggregate scale, it transforms the ecosystem. If several hundred European organisations contribute even 0.5% of their software budget, that represents several million euros annually funding European maintainers and feeding foundations.
A concrete example#
A French scale-up of 130 employees, whose annual software budget (licences and SaaS) reaches 480,000 euros, takes this commitment in May 2026 with a 12-month horizon. Technical leadership proposes and management validates a target of 1% of the software budget, i.e. 4,800 euros annually, to be allocated to open source funding. The breakdown is documented: 1,500 euros to the Linux Foundation (PostgreSQL and Kubernetes being major dependencies), 1,500 euros to NLnet Labs (which maintains Unbound and NSD used by the infrastructure), 800 euros via GitHub Sponsors to three identified maintainers of npm packages critical for the product, 1,000 euros to Hetzner to support their sponsorship of European open source projects (amplification mechanism). In addition, two developers on the team are allocated 4 hours a month to contribute to an open source project of their choice on which the company depends.
The company publishes the breakdown on its technical blog in January 2027. The publication is picked up by two specialised European media and inspires two other scale-ups in the ecosystem to formalise their own approach.
Anti-pattern to avoid#
An unpublished contribution does not constitute the commitment as worded. A contribution concentrated on a single visible project (“we give 10,000 € a year to such-and-such an emblematic project”) may be an excellent gesture, but it misses the goal of diffuse support to the chain. A hollow phrasing along the lines of “we support the open source ecosystem through various initiatives” without figures or named recipients does not constitute a tenable declaration.
Success indicators#
By the 12-month horizon, you can reasonably consider this commitment fulfilled if you have set a numerical target (percentage or absolute amount), made the contribution to at least two distinct recipients, and published a documented account of the approach. The long-term commitment takes shape with annual renewal and progressive growth of the contribution.
→ Documented in the dossier#
- Family 4 — Contribution concentration
- Family 5 — Positive counter-examples
- Family 6 — Supply chain fragility
- Family 7 — The AI turn
JSON schema category: funding. Default horizon: 12 months. Applicable to: businesses, public administrations, associations, foundations, research institutions.