Manifest file destiny: Declare your funding needs via JSON

Zerodha, an India-based stock brokerage, has launched a fund to support open source software, to which the company attributes its existence and success.

In order to apply, all that's required is publishing a funding.json manifest file on the open source project's website or code repository and submitting the URL to a fund directory.

Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha, announced the $1 million annual funding commitment for Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS/FLOSS) projects. (Free software and open source software have some tedious distinctions.)

"Without the high quality FOSS projects that we have freely downloaded and used to build our organization, products, and services, we would not exist as we do today - free as in both cost and freedom," said Nadh. "A significant portion of our success and growth is owed to FOSS, encompassing everything from programming languages to operating systems, to databases, web servers, front-end frameworks, productivity tools, code editors, and absolutely everything."

The financial firm relies on programming languages including Go, Python, Java, JavaScript, and Dart; databases such as PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Redis, SSDB, ScyllaDB, DuckDB, and MySQL; and other projects like Nginx, Vector, and Rundeck, to name just a few elements of its technology stack.

Nadh observes that while almost every technology company founded in the last decade owes a debt to FOSS, whether acknowledged or not, the scarcity of funding for open source projects has become a matter of acute concern, particularly as some cloud companies commercialize open source without giving much, if anything, back to the community.

This incidentally reflects Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg's rationale recently for demanding payment from WP Engine. WP Engine hosts websites built with the open source WordPress content management system and, according to Mullenweg, hasn't contributed enough of its revenue to support WordPress.

Getting paid for developing free software has always been a challenge. It has led companies like HashiCorp, Elastic, Neo4j, MongoDB, Redis, and Sentry to try alternative software licenses that attempt to limit competition from richer rivals. And it remains an area of active discussion and innovation through initiatives like Open Collective, GitHub Sponsors, and Bruce Perens' Post Open project.

Zerodha, said Nadh, has made various contributions over the years, pointing to its investment in ERPNext, co-founding FOSS United Foundation in India, and participating in the founding of OASIS (Open-Source Alliance for Social Innovation and Sustainability).

The company's FLOSS/fund represents an effort to lower the informational and bureaucratic barriers that backers face when trying to figure out how to allocate funds and that developers face when they seek support. By adding a funding.json manifest file to websites or repos, software developers can make their support requests programmatically accessible.

The FLOSS/fund website explains that the funding.json file "is a self-contained manifest file that FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) projects, developers, and communities can host on their websites or repositories to describe their financial requirements in a structured, machine-readable manner. It acts like a robots.txt file or a progressive web app manifest, allowing it to be publicly crawled and indexed, to make projects in need of financial assistance discoverable."

Projects can apply for $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000 in funding per year. Applications are publicly visible and Zerodha's investment committee will evaluate applications quarterly based on the associated project's "value, impact, criticality, and innovation." Funding decisions will be communicated via email and those accepted will be asked to complete the appropriate paperwork.

Nadh cites several reasons for undertaking this funding effort, including a sense of goodwill and reciprocity as a FOSS beneficiary, helping the ecosystem that businesses depend upon, applying peer pressure on other firms to support FOSS, expanding FOSS sustainability models, and exploring whether the funding.json manifest experiment can make financial needs easier to discover.

"Ensuring that this ecosystem thrives, without inadvertently turning parts of it into a classic tragedy of the commons, everything aside, is good, logical business strategy," he said. "At the very least, a profitable business should allocate a tiny fraction of its profits to support the projects it is directly reliant on." ®