Sourceware budget and funding 2026/2027, Fri 12, 15:00 UTC

Sourceware budget and funding 2026/2027, Fri 12, 15:00 UTC

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

Tomorrow is the second Friday of the month, so it is time for the
Sourceware Open Office again.

Based on last months budget discussions and last years financial
overview the Sourceware Project Leadership Committee wrote up an
ambitious budget and funding proposal for 2026/2027, see below. Lets
discuss if this matches community expectations and what the most
effective way is to drive this fundraising campaign.

Friday June 12, from 15:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC
At #overseers on irc.libera.chat

$ date -d "Fri Jun 12 15:00 UTC 2026"

We ended the previous year with the successful completion of our
infrastructure hardware refresh cycle
https://sourceware.org/sourceware-wiki/servers-and-services-2026/
Doubling of individual donations and increased (corporate) "in-kind"
support for hosting and networking support.

For the 2026/2027 fiscal year, we would like to shift our budget focus
to spend less on "iron" and more on "services and people". We would
like to finally provide financial support/compensation to our partner
OSUOSL. Hire payed staff/consultants to help with services upgrades
and VM migrations. And look into funding upstream Forgejo
improvements.

Our budget and funding targets three "layers" of sponsors. Individual
sponsors, Corporate sponsors and Grant Makers.

* Individual Sponsors: "Empowering the Maintainers"
  Independence and a worry-free developer experience

  Individual developers and contributors who rely on Sourceware for
  their daily work. Sourceware is the worry-free home for the tools
  you build and use every day. Our focus is on making your workflow
  faster, more secure and something you don't have to think about. It
  is just there. Thanks to your help we moved to a modern, VM-first
  infrastructure and are experimenting with a dedicated Forge to
  streamline collaboration. Your small, monthly contributions are the
  lifeblood of our independence, ensuring that the core infrastructure
  remains community-run and developer-focused.

- Target $4,000-$6,000
  $500 Domain fees, banking, and essential operational overhead.
  $1,000 Contribution toward OSUOSL colocation and bandwidth.
  $3,000 Forgejo improvements
  $1,500 Emergency hardware replacement fund.

* Corporate Sponsors: "Securing the Global Supply Chain"
  Infrastructure security and accelerating engineering velocity

  Sourceware hosts the projects at the very heart of the Free Software
  supply chain. We are seeking corporate partners to help us
  professionalize our security posture. By sponsoring Sourceware, you
  aren’t just donating; you are insuring the integrity of the tools
  your business is built upon. Our focus is on modernizing, isolating,
  and automating our services to stay ahead of the evolving
  cybersecurity landscape. And eliminating administrative tasks so
  engineers can focus on their projects.

- Target $4,000-$12,000
  4x $2,500-$4,000 Consultants to upgrade, VM isolation and automation
                   for bugzilla, public-inbox, patchwork and buildbot.
- In kind donations of builder machines and server hosting

* Grant Makers: "Sustainable Infrastructure for the Next 25 Years"
  Sustainability, Governance, and Global Impact

  Sourceware provides the foundational infrastructure that has
  anchored the core Free Software toolchain and developer tools for
  over 25 years. We are seeking institutional partners to help us
  preserve this deep institutional knowledge and safeguard the digital
  commons for the next quarter century. As a member project of the
  Software Freedom Conservancy, we pair our historical expertise with
  professional asset stewardship and independent community
  governance. Through our collaboration with corporate partners and
  the Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) we provide Free Infrastructure for Free
  Software projects. Grant funding will empower us to scale this
  critical cooperation, formalize our standard operating procedures,
  and transfer decades of technical expertise to the next generation
  of admins and developers.

- Target $20,000-$40,000 To hire a part-time Junior System
  Administrator (potentially in partnership with OSUOSL). This role
  will document Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), handle daily
  administrative tasks, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the
  infrastructure.

Our Mission https://sourceware.org/mission.html
Security Vision https://sourceware.org/sourceware-security-vision.html
25-Year Roadmap https://sourceware.org/sourceware-25-roadmap.html

Sourceware looking backward, looking forward:
https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/20260510223754.GR1219@gnu.wildebeest.org
And the yearly (financial) overview:
https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/20260516203206.GR1219@gnu.wildebeest.org

Sourceware relies on cooperation among a broad diversity of core
toolchain and developer tool projects, hackers, organizations,
ideas, and communication styles. The monthly Sourceware Open Office
meetings are one way of coming together as a community and discuss
our shared development infrastructure. For other ways to participate
see https://sourceware.org/mission.html#organization

Keep Sourceware worry-free, friendly and independent by donating
https://sourceware.org/donate.html support our fiscal sponser SFC
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer and/or support OSUOSL for
hosting Free Software projects https://osuosl.org/donate/

Do you or your company want to sponsor Sourceware plans financially
https://sourceware.org/sourceware-security-vision.html#plans
donate hardware or services then contact us at sponsor@sourceware.org

Re: Sourceware budget and funding 2026/2027, Fri 12, 15:00 UTC

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

On Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 12:38:35PM +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Based on last months budget discussions and last years financial
> overview the Sourceware Project Leadership Committee wrote up an
> ambitious budget and funding proposal for 2026/2027, see below. Lets
> discuss if this matches community expectations and what the most
> effective way is to drive this fundraising campaign.

For those that couldn't attend here is a summary.

It looked liked emails with lots of dollar signs and asking for money
go into spam filters, so not everybody had seen the Sourceware PLC
financials overview. It is also here now:
https://sourceware.org/financials.html

The PLC document is based on the financials from 2025/2026 and the
looking forward/looking backward discussions last month:
https://inbox.sourceware.org/20260516203206.GR1219@gnu.wildebeest.org/
https://inbox.sourceware.org/20260510223754.GR1219@gnu.wildebeest.org/

Switching from metal to people is a good funding goal. Especially
dodging RAM prices right now :)

There were some worries that there aren't enough "tasks" listed for
corporations to fund explicitly. But ideally sponsorships are not
targetted, they are general funding for the project (to make managing
the money better and easier for the project). But if there was
specific contract work that would be relevant for companies, we could
consider that separately.

We currently have items listed per funding "source" and only list the
tasks we believe we can do this year. But it would be good to list all
the work we want to get done (over multiple years). We do list more
under https://sourceware.org/sourceware-security-vision.html#plans
Modernizing account processes, Release upload process improvements,
Hardware keys, Security audit. It might be useful to just list them
all.

Question about spelling out the financial assumptions. For those
forgejo additions we assume $60/hour (total budget for a week work),
for upgrade/migration/automation tickets, we assume $80/hour (total
budget 3 to 6 days of work), for the junior sysadmin (at the end) we
assume $40/hour (total budget for 2.5 days for 6 to 12 months). Many
of the SFC contractors are around $40/hour, we have to do special
approvals if it's over $100/hour. People in north america/australia
are often about $75/hour. It is normal for people to charge much lower
rates for nonprofits.

We might want to consider corporate sponsorship "levels". the
Reproducible Builds team (who is another SFC project) uses
that. https://reproducible-builds.org/donate/#benefits-of-sponsorship
https://reproducible-builds.org/who/sponsors/
Then a corporation would fund for a specific "level" and not for a
specific task/contract.

In general people seem to agree you have to start somewhere and the
current estimates are OK, but on the low end. We can be even more
ambitious, ask for more than what we currently believe we can spend in
a year and see if some individuals, corporatations or grant maker
surprises us.

We currently have a healthy reserve. We could operate for one or two
years without any additional income. And for our minimal baseline we
just depend on individual sponsors and some corporate in-kind
(hosting) support.

What is next?

- Create a new sponsors page that lists incentives, levels and "bonus"
  targets.
- Link it all together with the financials and donate pages.
- Find Sourceware Ambassadors to drive the fundraising campaign.

Re: Sourceware budget and funding 2026/2027, Fri 12, 15:00 UTC

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 12:59:10AM +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 12:38:35PM +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > Based on last months budget discussions and last years financial
> > overview the Sourceware Project Leadership Committee wrote up an
> > ambitious budget and funding proposal for 2026/2027, see below. Lets
> > discuss if this matches community expectations and what the most
> > effective way is to drive this fundraising campaign.
> [...] 
> What is next?
> 
> - Create a new sponsors page that lists incentives, levels and "bonus"
>   targets.
> - Link it all together with the financials and donate pages.
> - Find Sourceware Ambassadors to drive the fundraising campaign.

The Sourceware PLC reviewed all feedback and we now have:

- https://sourceware.org/donate.html
  The individual donation page. Please donate if you haven't yet.
  Every contribution makes a difference.

- https://sourceware.org/sponsor.html
  The corporate sponsorship page. With three different tiers.
  If your company would like to become a financial sponsor, or become
  a resource partner please contact us at sponsor@sourceware.org

- https://sourceware.org/financials.html
  Sourceware financials, budget and funding targets for 2026/2027.

Next week, start of next month, we'll start a formal fundraising
campaign.

Cheers,

Mark