Dedicated funds for open source

From now on, data.coop will give 10% of our earnings of the cooperative to open source projects. This was decided by the members on our 2025 general assembly.

Apart from human resources and hardware (our servers), our infrastructure is made up of open source software. As a cooperative, we’re just the tip of an iceberg, with a huge ecosystem of open source software, foundations, associations, volunteers and private companies underneath. And all of the services we offer are open source projects that in themselves are their own iceberg.

As an example, we’re offering Nextcloud, which is utilising PHP, Go, Git, Docker, the Linux kernel and a collection of thousands of software libraries adding support for various image formats, network protocols, encryption, compression, translation, etc.

Giving money to a couple of projects might not change the world. But it’s a start, and a way as a cooperative to try and be a good example.

The proposal suggested a range of different models, which were discussed at the general assembly. Here’s a rough translation of the amendment for our statutes (originally in Danish) that was agreed upon:

§ 11 Dedicated funds for open source

To help secure sustainable open source development, the cooperative will each year dedicate 10% of the earnings from service fees as funds to pass on to one or more open source projects. The money is set aside at the end of the financial year, when we know the amount of service fees earned for the year.

§ 11.1 The list of open source-projects that may recieve funds

With the help from the group of administrators and the members in general, the board of directors will keep a list of open source projects that we:

• Either already directly use
• Or could have an interest in using, if we give the financial help for further development

A requirement to be on the list, is that it must be possible for the board of directors to identify a trustworthy place to transfer the money to.

As many projects in themselves are dependent on other projects, we are unable to identify all projects on all levels that serve as the foundation for our systems. Thus, the list is comprised only of projects that we use/may use directly.

§ 11.2 Sharing the money

The annual general meeting decides how to share the money.