Focusing On Open Source

tl;dr: I joined the Sovereign Tech Fund as a Technologist to help make OSS more sustainable. It’s a dream role that combines my passion for open source with my desire to tackle its biggest challenges.

Oh, hi there! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been over a month since I announced the closing of the React Native chapter of my career - and I just want to call out one more time that the support and love and energy I’ve received was beyond my wildest expectations. So thank you for it, and thank you sticking around even after that ☺️

Today, I’m thrilled to finally reveal what I’ve been cooking up: as you’ve read in the tldr, I’ve joined the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF for short) as a Technologist! The anticipation has been killing me, and I can’t wait to share more about this exciting new adventure.

“You are WHERE…” #

What is the Sovereign Tech Fund? #

The Sovereign Tech Fund is one of the few organizations in the WORLD that bring the public sector (you know, the government/state) into the Open Source sustainability conversation. In particular, they do so as a Germany-state entity. In other words: they obtain money from the German government and, through a couple of different programs, give them to Open Source maintainers to help them be sustainable and have more solid foundations.

The mission statement says it better:

The Sovereign Tech Fund supports the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital infrastructure. Our goal is to sustainably strengthen the open source ecosystem. We focus on security, resilience, technological diversity, and the people behind the code.

Why it matters #

The key words in that statement I want to point out are infrastructure and resilience. In the open source world, these are crucial because:

1. Infrastructure projects often form the backbone of countless other applications but can be overlooked. ( obligatory xkcd image)
2. Resilience ensures these critical projects can withstand challenges and continue to serve the community.

STF isn’t just trying to give some money to some OSS projects to have them do whatever - no no no! The focus is on supporting critical projects that everyone of us one way or another leverages, and support the maintainers in handling the non-sexy parts.

And this, this is so DAMN AWESOME.

I’ve been the person doing the boring, janitorial work in SO MANY occasions and I know oh-so-well how hard it is to find the motivation and discipline to tackle them; and when you are overburdened, working under a lot of pressure, those are usually the first things to get pushed down at the bottom of the backlog, despite their (sometimes critical) importance. I truly think that this project, with this focus, can truly be a game changer for sustainability. (…did I mention there’s also a Bug Resilience Program?)

Moreover, because it’s one of the few in the world of this kind, there’s also the angle of leading by example, which makes it all even more exciting.

The impact so far #

To give you an idea of the scale we’re talking about, here are a few examples of projects supported by STF:

• GNOME: €1,000,000.00 (yes, 1 FLIPPIN’ MILLION)
• PHP: €205,000.00
• OpenJS Foundation (you know, NodeJS, JQuery, etc): €874,940.00

And these are only a few of the 40 technologies supported since October 2022. The magnitude is truly impressive, isn’t it? (yeah I mean I guess it’s probably pretty clear why I joined them already)

“…doing WHAT…” #

My role as a Technologist #

Some of you might look at my new role and go “👁️👄👁️wut” - and I wouldn’t blame you, it’s my first time encountering this label myself. I’ll put my hands forward actually: I started less than a month ago and I’m still figuring it out myself… along with a quick and easy way to explain it.

What I can tell you is that, first off, it does not involve coding as a core task. So in a way, I’ve not only closed my Microsoft and my React Native chapters, but also the software engineer one (at least in the formal capacity, and at least for now).

Leveraging my experience #

My role at STF is essentially being the person in the room with technical expertise and open source maintenance experience. I will leverage this to:

1. Help drive internal conversations around which projects to support and how.
2. Communicate and collaborate externally with maintainers and other partners and companies.
3. (…and probably a bunch more things - again I’m still figuring it out ok!? 🤣*)*

Especially in the context of our main investing program, which is a quite an involved process, this is super relevant: as I mentioned before, it’s not just “here’s a bunch of money, go wild”, but much more about working together with the maintainers in coming up with a series of important tasks they want to tackle and figuring out how much money they need to sustain those, and then checking in along the way.

For some examples of what I mean, read out the “What are we funding?” section of any of the technologies funded so far (like, here’s Log4j).

How React Native prepared me #

I’m truly grateful for the years spent on React Native as a maintainer: not only because it gave me the experience of working with both massive and smaller OSS projects and interact with many maintainers along the way, but also because it trained my brain to be flexible in constantly learning new technologies, how all the different languages involved work, and be able to hop around when needed from something frontend to something tooling to something infra.

Couldn’t have asked for a better brain gym ;)

“…now?” #

A long-standing commitment to OSS #

My passion for addressing the challenges in open source sustainability has deep roots. Even before joining Microsoft and before Covid (it feels SO LONG ago now), I was actively involved in the OSS ecosystem.

One initiative I’m particularly proud of is ProvidedAsIs, a meetup here in London I co-organised with John Barker from Ansible (by Red Hat). Our goal was to create a support group for maintainers to meet, vent, and learn strategies for dealing with OSS issues. Although Covid put a pause on our meetups, the experience reinforced my commitment to supporting the OSS community.

From maintainer to sustainer #

If you’ve known me for my work in the React Native space, you’ll know I’ve always been vocal about sustainability in open source (and about its mental health impact). After all, I’ve lived both sides:

1. Being a developer during the work day and a maintainer during my free time
2. Being a full-time software engineer working on open source during my work hours

During my time at Microsoft, I’ve also had the opportunity to talk with many maintainers who needed help and support, and I praised initiatives like Expensify’s that directly compensate people for contributing to their repository. At Microsoft, the closest to that is the Open Source Fund.

Looking ahead #

Joining STF feels like a natural progression in my journey to make a significant impact in the open-source world. It aligns perfectly with my personal values and long-term career goals of fostering a more sustainable and resilient OSS ecosystem.

Of course, there will be challenges. Transitioning from a hands-on engineering role to a more strategic position will have its learning curve. But I’m excited to tackle these challenges head-on and contribute to shaping the future of open source sustainability.

It’s going to be a wild ride for sure; and now that the cat is out of the sac ( a quote for few) expect me to be back at being more active on social media.

And if you are involved in open source, as an OSPO person or a maintainer, do reach out! I’d love to talk to you - and I actually have a list of people I wanna chat with already ;)

Can’t wait to see how this new snowball will roll: just as my React Native journey grew from a small start into something significant, I’m excited to see how this new chapter will evolve and what impact we can make together in the world of open source.

To stay updated on my work with STF and my thoughts on open source, make sure to follow me on the various socials (all the links are below and in the main page)!

See You Space Cowboy…

Lorenzo