Weighing open source project funding options, from taxes to anarchy

Justin Warren is founder and principal analyst at PivotNine, a technology consulting and analyst firm based in Melbourne, Australia. Until 2023, he was a board member at Electronic Frontiers Australia, a non-profit national organization representing Internet users. At KubeCon North America last year, he asked a press conference panel of enterprise IT leaders what they were doing to compensate open source maintainers "so they don't starve to death."

A self-described "filthy socialist," Warren favors a tax or tax-like system for funding open source libraries that are widely used but not full-fledged products -- especially when the alternative is an offer from a malicious actor maintainers can't refuse. Together, Warren and Beth explore various approaches to shoring up the maintenance, security and sustainability of open source software and discuss the future outlook for the industry in this episode.