Launch OSS Pledge

[chadwhitacre]

We want to make it socially acceptable for companies to pay meaningful amounts of money to Open Source every year.

We are soft-launched at 👉 osspledge.com.

Big marketing campaign in October - SF billboards scheduled for Oct 7 through November 3.

To Do

• pick a domain name
• Make a one-pager ~= landing page #9
• Make a deck #10
• Develop a brand identity #8
• Ship OOH art - due September 16 #11
• Make a website #6
• Recruit Pledgers #5
• Promote #7

Inspo

• https://pledge1percent.org/
• https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2018/mar/9/one-percent-for-open-source/
• https://givingpledge.org/about
• https://www.theclimatepledge.com/
• https://www.cos.io/initiatives/top-guidelines
• https://uberpython.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/the-python-3-wall-of-shame/
• https://sso.tax/
• https://stripe.com/climate
• https://fossunited.org/foss-pledge
• https://www.fastly.com/fast-forward ← design inspo; also ... member?
• https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/
• https://esr.gitlab.io/loadsharers/
• https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/

[chadwhitacre]

Here are the things a company can do to support Open Source:

• pay cash
• dedicate employee time to upstream
• publish projects (~= employee time)
• give gifts-in-kind

What is in-scope for Pledge? Cash only or all or some or ... ? 🤔

[chadwhitacre]

What's the outcome we're trying to drive? Healthy Open Source (who didn't like "healthy"? I forget).

Balance user freedom and developer sustainability.
Balance innovation and stability.
Balance corporate and indie.

[chadwhitacre]

The Salesforce 1% model is time, product, and equity (financial resources).

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

Pledge 1% - The CEO Equity Playbook v_1.pdf

Pledge 1% - The Companion Guide to the CEO Equity Playbook v_1.pdf

[chadwhitacre]

Sigh. PDFs were gated. 😭

[chadwhitacre]

Note that we can only accept pledges from founders or executives who have the ability to make a decision on behalf of their company.

https://info.pledge1percent.org/pledgenow

[chadwhitacre]

Staff:

1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-lesnick-315910/ (CEO/President)
2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellefifis/ (Community Manager)
3. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliegildea/ (VP, Business Development)
4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/minyoo/ (Sr. Director of Marketing and Communications)
5. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciamschmidt/ (VP. Member Impact)
6. https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-antonio-barroso-1ba387130/ (Chief of Staff to the CEO)
7. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-jennine-hart/ (Executive Assistant)
8. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandra-parra-74b75231/ (Operations Manager)
9. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynsatcher/ (Director of Equity Operations )

Charity Navigator - "Not currently rated" shrug

[chadwhitacre]

Had an internal call, agreements:

1. Outcome is a dozen companies Sentry's size also giving $500k/year 18 months from now.
2. Name is Pledge. It fits from a marketing perspective, doesn't couple us to specific implementation.
3. Focus is cash to indie OSS. Other things (time, product) are fine but cash is core to this
4. Benchmark is $/dev. It's easy to reason about, and causes less friction for private companies who will be the bulk for the foreseeable future. Also builds on existing narrative.
5. Open, light-weight reporting. Accountability, yes, but no heavy auditing (no staff).

[chadwhitacre]

Moving to https://github.com/getsentry/osspledge.com/issues.

[chadwhitacre]

The heart of this is going to be light-weight reporting on a) number of devs and b) dollars given to Open Source, in some consistent format. I think my next step here is to go through this exercise for Sentry and use that to generate a specific proposal for a format to run by others listening in.

[LewisJEllis]

Some quick thoughts to share:

• I really like the lightweight simplified approach, $1k/dev/year rule of thumb is very straightforward
• As an IC who likes open source and would try to get the org I work for to Do The Thing, I could benefit from:
  • A "How To Convince Your Boss / Management" spiel - how can an org / company value it past "seems like the right thing to do"? branding, marketing, more appealing place to work, sustaining commons, etc
  • A walkthrough of what to do / how to actually do it - say I have approval to distribute a pile of cash, now what? thanks.dev, GitHub sponsors, etc
• I suspect a lot of startups might worry "are my investors gonna think I'm just lighting their money on fire?", and so would be happier/less hesitant to jump on this if they could see VCs saying "this is cool and we support it and you should do it"
  • I imagine VCs who invest in/adjacent to open source would be happy to help provide support / social proof here
• A "who's doing it and how much" page / leaderboard could also be great, as exposure / recognition for participating companies, and as social proof for companies considering it
  • This also pushes the "no excuses, put your money where your mouth is" etc angle that I've seen Cramer express

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for jumping in @LewisJEllis.

• A "who's doing it and how much" page / leaderboard could also be great, as exposure / recognition for participating companies, and as social proof for companies considering it
  • This also pushes the "no excuses, put your money where your mouth is" etc angle that I've seen Cramer express

☝️ This right here is like the whole thing. It's all about trying to build social pressure / proof / validation, see how far we can get with it. We might need government to finish the job but we should be able to make a solid start with brand marketing value for early adopters.

[nehzatarmin]

Thanks for jumping in @LewisJEllis.

• A "who's doing it and how much" page / leaderboard could also be great, as exposure / recognition for participating companies, and as social proof for companies considering it

  • This also pushes the "no excuses, put your money where your mouth is" etc angle that I've seen Cramer express

☝️ This right here is like the whole thing. It's all about trying to build social pressure / proof / validation, see how far we can get with it. We might need government to finish the job but we should be able to make a solid start with brand marketing value for early adopters.

Let me know if we can help in any way @chadwhitacre this is something we'd love to promote...

[chadwhitacre]

Talked to Neon, idea from them to partner with SafeBase (e.g.) to deliver OSS Pledge attestations alongside other things like SOC2.

[chadwhitacre]

Talked to Clerk, positive vibe, gonna circle back when we're closer.

[nehzatarmin]

@chadwhitacre not sure if you've seen this on HN but we gave you guys a little mention :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40905849

The positive feedback we're also getting for Sentry is consistent month on month as we get more maintainers come onboard

[chadwhitacre]

@selviano and I are on a call about this, we just signed for SF billboards in October(!), so we now have a deadline. I've split out three tickets for our high-level todo items (from the issue description):

• Make a website #6
• Recruit Pledgers #5
• Promote #7

[chadwhitacre]

Alright! @selviano and I met with design. I've added a few items to our todo.