In a significant move to support Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS), Zerodha, India’s largest stock brokerage, has unveiled a dedicated annual fund of $1 million for open-source projects globally. Kailash Nadh, chief technology officer at Zerodha, announced the creation of the FLOSS Fund aiming to provide structured financial support to projects that have been pivotal to the development of technology companies worldwide.
“Without high-quality FOSS projects that we have freely downloaded and used to build our organisation, products, and services, we would not exist as we do today,” said Nadh, acknowledging the critical role that FOSS has played in Zerodha’s success.
The fund will offer a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 to each recipient, totaling $1 million annually, with the potential to increase the fund size in the future.
Nadh emphasised that while many technology companies, including Zerodha, owe much of their success to FOSS, the lack of financial sustainability for these projects has long been a challenge. He pointed out that cloud companies have made massive profits by repackaging FOSS projects, often developed by hobbyists and small communities. “Funding and financial sustainability, or the lack thereof, has been an increasingly hot topic over the last many years,” Nadh noted.
FLOSS Fund for Open Source
The FLOSS Fund aims to address this gap by providing a structured funding mechanism. “Ad hoc and reaching out simply do not suffice—we have to shut up or put up,” he remarked, highlighting the need for a more formal approach to funding FOSS.
The FLOSS Fund will be operated like an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) but with a focus on funding. A small dedicated team will manage the fund, ensuring that the process is streamlined and efficient. Projects from around the world can apply for support through a new system that Zerodha is implementing.
The company has also proposed a “funding.json” file format, which will allow FOSS projects to signal their financial needs directly on their repositories or websites, making it easier for donors to discover and support them.
The fund will begin by accepting applications through this format and aims to make the process transparent by publishing the projects in need of funding on a directory accessible to all.
Zerodha’s Commitment to Open Source
“An alternate vision is very difficult for me to comprehend, and a non-FOSS path to building technology, let alone an organisation, has never seemed logical,” said Nadh.
Zerodha’s commitment to open source is not new. In 2019, the company invested in ERPNext, a FOSS ERP system that it uses extensively. In 2020, it co-founded the FOSS United Foundation, which promotes FOSS development in India. The firm has also been involved in establishing OASIS, an alliance that focuses on open-source adoption in the social sector.
Additionally, Zerodha has been providing grants to FOSS projects, though the company admits that this has been done in an ad hoc manner until now.
“We have managed to build a commercially successful business on top of FOSS that we have freely, in both cost and freedom, adopted from all over the world,” Nadh stated, explaining the company’s motivation to formalise its contributions to the open-source community.
Nadh, personally has been an active proponent of open source software not just with the FOSS movement, encouraging open source developers across India, but has been vocal highlighting the
“Most companies that have been incorporated or built in the last decade, use 90% open source to power their stuff. So everybody from governments to for-profit corporations to you know tiny little startups that are being built, everybody immediately picks and chooses the highest quality open source to build whatever they want,” said Nadh in an exclusive video interaction with AIM.
Nadh was also a speaker at the recent AIM summit Cypher 2024.
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