We are living in an exciting time time with the explosion of AI/LLM products flooding the market. A co-worker of mine, Erika Rice Scherpelz, wrote a great blog post about the current hype cycle and how this differs from crypto mania.

I have been thinking about how AI can help maintainers not burn out. Let's look at the potential upsides that can free up maintainers: bug triage, code review, security testing, support, and documentation. TBH, that is just scratching the surface.

The downsides are hallucinations, bias, cost, and probably many more that I'm unaware of. In addition, as generative AI grows, more and more code will be generated. This could create more opportunities for bad actors to exploit the influx of new projects and critical dependencies.

The million-dollar question is, will AI/LLMs help or further burden maintainers? We don't have a choice but to wait and see. What do you think? I want to hear what is on your mind. Join the discussion here.

Sovereign Tech Fund opens the funding application process

Richard Littauer · SustainOSS Discord

"The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in the development, improvement and maintenance of open digital base technologies worldwide, not just in Germany."

Open Source Collective is Hiring Maintainers

Benjamin Nickolls · Open Source Collective

"Open Source Collective is now able to hire maintainers, full or part-time, including benefits and healthcare, to work on projects with sufficient financial support."

Bloomberg Launches FOSS Fund

Alyssa Wright · Tech at Bloomberg

"To help maintain and sustain this ecosystem, companies and nonprofits alike have experimented with a framework called a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Contributor Fund. First piloted by employment website Indeed in 2019, a FOSS Fund is a mechanism that enables a company’s employees to nominate open source software projects they rely on (or participate in) every day."

Open Source: Separating Fact from Fiction

Ashwin Ramaswami · Linux Foundation

"Only when researchers, policymakers, developers, and funders truly understand what open source software is can they make the best and most well-informed decisions. Here, we address some common myths and misconceptions about open source software so that all constituents can make fully informed decisions about the ecosystem."

Rewarding Resilience: Rust & the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy

Shane Miller · Rust Foundation

"The technology we depend on today for healthcare, money, defense, and just about everything else is built on top of legacy applications, engineered by creators who could not have guessed the breadth of dependencies their work would eventually support. My own code from the 1990s is still used by financial services today, hidden behind screens and interfaces that appear very modern to users."

The Role of Foundations in Securing OSS

Rebecca Rumbul · OpenSSF

OSS foundations, like the Rust Foundation, are the only actors that can take on this role. This is because these non-profit organisations are constituted to support the common good in OSS ecosystems.

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