For nearly a decade, Open Collective has served as the financial and legal infrastructure for over 3,000 open source projects, managing millions in funding. However, for much of that history, the platform itself was owned by Venture Capitalists a tension that sits at the heart of the FOSS funding conversation.
In this talk, we reveal how the platform’s largest users, specifically the Open Source Collective—orchestrated a coup to boot out the initial investors and restructure the entity into a 501(c)(6) membership non-profit - Open Finance Consortium (https://oficonsortium.org/). This is a case study in "Exit to Community" (E2C), demonstrating a radical alternative to the traditional startup exit that often threatens FOSS sustainability. https://blog.opencollective.com/the-open-collective-platform-is-moving-to-a-community-governed-non-profit/
We will move beyond the celebration of the acquisition to discuss the hard realities that followed. It is one thing to "free" a platform; it is another to sustain it. We will explore:
The Negotiation: How a Fiscal Host leveraged its position to facilitate a transition from private equity to community ownership.
Governance vs. Reality: The evolution of our shared governance model and the difficulty of putting democratic ideals into practice while running a complex tech stack.
The Financials: The transparent challenges of achieving financial sustainability without the cushion of VC cash flow, and what was sacrificed in the process.
This session is for maintainers, funders, and policymakers interested in the structural future of FOSS infrastructure. We offer not just a success story, but a candid look at the friction involved in building a technology platform that is truly owned by the ecosystem it serves.