OSS + ELC EU 2026

"Foundation" is a word that carries weight: endowments, permanence, institutional resources. In the philanthropic world, foundations often have millions or billions in their endowments. In open source, the same word describes organizations that range from trademark holders and event hosts to genuine funders of development work.
That gap between expectation and reality matters. When developers, companies, and governments hear "foundation," many assume someone already has it covered. That assumption is one reason so many critical open source projects remain underfunded: the name signals security that often doesn't exist.
This talk unpacks the spectrum of what open source foundations actually do and don't fund, why the word creates a misleading picture of available resources, and what genuine infrastructure funding looks like in practice. Drawing on the work of the Sovereign Tech Agency, which funds critical open source projects and the ecosystem infrastructure sustaining them, this session offers a clearer picture of where the money is, where it isn't, and what that means for the long-term health of open source.