Sustain Summit 2018 was a one-day event around the sustainability of open source. It was a full day of sessions with 100 open source enthusiasts who tackled topics such as governance, community management, succession planning, and more.
We want to thank our event organizers for their fantastic efforts in hosting this event and for facilitating conversations around this crucial topic.
During the event, we held a session to discuss how to address the financial sustainability of open source software through establishing national public funds and dedicated taxes. You can find our session notes below.
Subject
Explore the possibility of using government taxes as an alternative way to create a steady income for open source projects.
Reasoning
Like other goods and services, software purchases are also subject to “Value-added tax (VAT)”. VAT compensates for the shared services and infrastructure (like “Roads and Bridges”).
Open source software can be recognized as a digital infrastructure that allows other commercial software to build their business on top of it. Therefore, creating a fund through a “software-targeted” tax could be justifiable.
Outcome
- This fund could consist of government tax revenues, funds, crowdfunding campaigns, sponsors, etc.
- The fund could distribute the collected taxes through initiatives like Open Collective. Open Collective’s built-in transparency would also address concerns about how the money is being spent.
- Since all open source projects can get an income from this fund, a new metric system needs to be introduced to understand the size and the importance of open source projects.
- Other similar programs/campaigns can be studied to learn more about the experience — for example, the “Public Money, Public Code” campaign.
- These “sustainability” conversations can be extended to other intellectual properties & digital content, next to software — for example, open hardware initiatives such as Open Source Ecology.
Related links & ideas
Tax incentives for electric vehicles in the EU
One percent for open source
Participants
Bastien Guerry
Marcos Montes Fontelo
Serkan Holat