Open Source Endowment

The Open Source Endowment is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by VC investor Konstantin Vinogradov and backed by prominent open-source programmers. Its mission is to provide sustainable, long-term funding for critical open-source projects and their maintainers, addressing the perennial issue of underfunded and burned-out developers. It operates by building a large endowment, investing its assets, and distributing a fraction of the income to projects based on criteria like user base and reliance by other software, prioritizing those not already well-supported.