The Government and the Art of Infrastructure Maintenance (froscon2024)

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Hint: This talk is going to be in German. The Sovereign Tech Fund is a state-funded organization in Germany which is strengthening the open source ecosystem in the public interest. In this talk we share insights into our work and challenges, including findings from our recent Open Source maintainer survey. Join us in taking a look at how the Sovereign Tech Fund, a state-funded organization in Germany, has been developing ways to strengthen and support the free and open source ecosystem in the public interest. This ecosystem underpins the digital infrastructure, in particular the software components and tools, on which governments, private companies, and individuals rely. But what does it mean to strengthen this ecosystem? In this session we’ll look at the different ways STF is putting public money to work for this mission. Some of the issues STF is working on include: a) Limited funding for long-term maintenance and security work b) Fragmented career and employment prospects for project maintainers c) Growing the pool of open source maintainers and contributors We’ll include lessons from the first two years of our existence, some insights from our survey of open source maintainers, as well some ideas on how all the different parts in the FOSS landscape can work together for a more resilient and fair system. This is a work in progress, but we’re trying to ensure the software our societies depend on is sustainable long-term. about this event: https://programm.froscon.org/2024/events/3149.html