Open Future: a focus on community as infrastructure for reclaiming open

...and why I am moving Open Source Wishlist under this focus.

Open Source Wishlist is something I wish existed when I led Microsoft's FOSS Fund. It has been a creative opportunity to demonstrate to the ecosystem how we can solve multiple sustainability problems at once through standardization, visibility, communication, paid labor and recognition. Building it has been an amazing, cathartic experience, but it's time to transition it underneath a bigger picture of advocating for an "open future."

I am transitioning it under a bigger focus of Open Future, where I will continue to build community infrastructure to advance conversations. Shining light on efforts that might not otherwise be happening inside for-profit product and corporate spaces; to connect on efforts and outcomes that matter for people.

Why this shift?

Building an end-to-end program for sustainability is incredibly hard without funding, or a salary, even with the most optimism I can put forward.

That said OSS Wishlist was never intended to be an income supplement for me or a product, but rather as proof of concept that: it's not actually that difficult to solve many open source sustainability problems (we know how to fix most challenges), but the need must be visible, people must be paid and that includes the maintainer AND their core contributors.

I stand by this solution, but realize there's a lot more at play - AI is causing a type of paralysis of investment for open source matters that are not strictly AI or security related AND solving broad issues of sustainability appears to be something increasingly expected of foundations and government (this is another blog post).

Sustaining OSS at its current scale under widespread vibe coding requires major changes in how maintainers are paid. - Vibe Coding Kills Open Source

Looking to the future: people and communities

People are looking and asking about their futures, the futures of their careers, education systems, countries, justice, safety, all with the lens of openness. Many of us are frustrated and feel powerless with the open-washing and outright extraction of labor happening, growing weary of trying to change systems from within existing structures, and interested in inventing new ones.

Under the umbrella of Open Future, I will continue to invest in convening and supporting people and communities on topics that require reinvention of ourselves, our governments, our education systems, and push back on corporate-led influences, including exploring what it means for "Open Source AI" to be aligned with community intentions (including, and especially non-developers).

Next Open Future Calls

Our next Open Source Practitioner Call is today (February 17th) and we have 26 people signed up so far to talk about the future of open source careers. After that, another focused on Digital Sovereignty in Canada, where openness features centrally in that future. We will have two different share-outs from folks actively engaging with government on these subjects, including myself!

I also co-chair the Alignment for AI in Open Source, CHAOSS WG, which meets every two weeks - the next one is February 18th.

Invitation

If you want to propose a popup topic, lead a session, or come share your work, the door is open.

You can still create and fulfill wishes, and you should!

And if you want to scale or lead the OSS Wishlist effort, it's all there to run and I would support your onboarding if need be. Connect on the #leadership-contribution channel.

Come find us.

I want to thank every practitioner who has signed up (so far) to contribute to wishes: Sayak Sarkar, Shauna Gordon-McKeon, Coraline Ada Ehmke, Ruth Suehle, Ruth Ikegah, Christos Bacharakis, and Dawn Foster. And every project that trusted us with a wishlist. Having the trust of people I look up to has meant the world to me.

Also sincere gratitude to Open Collective and Ecosyste.ms for their generous time and support.

Note: oss-wishlist.com will soon redirect to open-future.org, when I have a chance to do that.