Ask HN: How to gain support for free/open-source contributions within a company?

8 points by lbbenjohnston 3 years ago · 1 comment · 2 min read

I am passionate about free and open-source software (FOSS) and am wondering if anyone has had success ramping up any kind of process at their organisation to actively contribute financially to FOSS.

I am asking mostly with my hat as a Senior Developer at a large-ish company in Australia. I also have got a second hat of seeing how Wagtail (a project I actively contribute code to) - https://wagtail.org/ - can better encourage support.

Where I work, I do not have lots of say over big decisions, and essentially no say over financial decisions. However, would like to see how I could best advocate long term for supporting key open-source projects we rely on.

There is the 'support' route but I am trying to side-step that and look to get money given to entities for their ongoing maintenance and to acknowledge the value it provides our company. In my thinking, paid support is a great way for organisations to contribute but not really what I am hoping to solve here.

## Any ideas or any war stories of dead ends or success stories of what has worked?

My current ideas are;

a. A project specific 'kitty' of a budget that can be given each year to projects that help the current project I work on. pre-approved amount maybe linked to the revenue the product generates and then goes through some sign off.

b. A company wide 'grants' like initiative where we get nominations from different teams for projects and these get dispersed annually.

c. Leveraging some sort of 'in kind' donations but as a more formal process. Not contributions or time but rather linked to the services we provide.

## Tough reality

I am unlikely to get this going, it's a tough sell when organisations get this stuff for 'free'.

My biggest selling point is maybe retroactive value recognition (similar to how we give bonuses - sometimes - to staff) or proactive risk mitigation.

Secondary selling points are marketing (we get to promote ourselves to the developers out there and also as a more altruistic brand) and better internal developer community interactions (the nomination process).

Risks that the organisation may push back on are that public knowledge of the tools/libraries we use may expose us, risks of the finance being put into the wrong hands, all the logistics of invoicing.