2025-03-10 –, bUm Box
Open Web Docs has raised more than $3m from diverse funding sources for open source web platform documentation. Funds support a small global team, contractors and minor expenses. This talk is a case study on the economics of OWD: how we “sell” open documentation (which isn’t on software dependency lists) and diversify fundraising strategies.
To our knowledge, we are the largest fund hosted by the Open Collective fiscal host, and the first to offer full time, locally-compliant, waged employment without an open source foundation. While there has been a lot of discussion about OS Funds such as the STF, we think guidance and dialogue for financial management for OSS projects is lacking and would like to spark that discussion by sharing what we've learned. We hope this will also be helpful for the OS Funds to consider, given that they will shape the next generation of open source projects.
Jory Burson is the VP of Standards for the Linux Foundation, where she helps projects identify opportunities for standardization and collaborate on specifications. She is an open source developer-turned-standards practitioner, who is passionate about bringing the best of open source and standards-making best practices to bear in open projects. With over a decade of experience in the field, Jory has worked with several private and non-profit organizations including OASIS Open, W3C, Ecma International, and the web standards consultancy Bocoup, to name a few. She is known for her expertise in web standards, open source governance, and community management.
Florian Scholz is the Director of Open Web Docs. He began volunteer editing MDN Web Docs as a teen in 2009 and previously worked at Mozilla as MDN's Lead Content Strategist, Technical Writer & Documentation Engineer from 2013 until 2020. He's one of the creators of the browser compatibility data (BCD) project and it makes him happy when open source projects collaborate. He lives in Bremen, Germany; not in Berlin. Other than submitting and reviewing PRs on GitHub, he enjoys listening to wave and post-punk music.