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The OSDL (Open Source Development Labs), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux and open source software, announced March 29 that it establishing the OSDL Fellowship Fund.
This Fund will provide financial support to software developers working on Linux and open-source community projects that dont have access to financial resources or support.
In recent weeks, its become clear then ever that some important open-source projects are woefully underfinanced.
For example, Marco Peereboom, from the OpenBSD project, recently wrote in the OpenBSD Journal, that the project “for the past 2 years has turned a loss of approximately $20K USD ($40K total). I dont think I need to explain in many words what that is doing to our beloved OS, and worse, our main systems architect. This is starting to seriously impede the development of OpenBSD and OpenSSH.”
OpenBSD has long been known as one of the most secure of all operating systems.
In addition, as the projects lead developer, Theo de Raadt, noted in a recent interview, OpenSSH (Open Secure Shell) is used by “companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies—we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent.”
If this can happen to such high-profile projects as OpenBSD and OpenSSH, it can happen to any open-source project thats not connected with a strong business.