In a significant show of support for open source developers, major organizations like Canonical, the ones behind Ubuntu, and Zerodha, the Indian brokerage and financial services giant, have made substantial contributions to open source initiatives.
This growing trend of corporate support underscores a shift towards collaborative, transparent, and community-driven software development that benefits a global ecosystem of developers, businesses, and users alike.
Canonical to Donate $120,000
Canonical has announced its intentionto donate $120,000 to open source developers, collaborating with thank.dev to disburse $10,000 every month, with an algorithm deciding which open source developer gets how much.
The donations have already begun since April, with Canonical donating to projects that it depends on to ship its products and services. So far, they have donated a total of $20,000 to open source projects, with the amounts ranging from $496.95-$20.
Thanks.dev allocates the funds based on how widely dependencies are used across projects, ensuring more popular packages receive a larger share. While the platform allows fine-tuning by programming language and GitHub organization, Canonical has chosen to adjust only the language-level weights for now.
For a better understanding of how the algorithm works, you can go through the official resource on this topic.
Zerodha joins Open Source Pledge
Zerodha, along with many other organizations like Posit, Sanity, Tideways, and a few others, have joined NASDAQ's Open Source Pledge, which is now 34 members strong.
It is a commitment by companies to help close the funding gap for smaller open source projects. Many of these projects are maintained by developers who receive little to no compensation, despite their software being widely used. The pledge offers direct, no-strings-attached financial support to help maintainers sustain their work.
According to their members page, companies have paid a total of $2,650,212 to open source maintainers over the past year.
If you ask me, it's good to see open source support moving from one-time donations to more regular, reliable contributions.
With companies using platforms like thanks.dev and joining efforts like the Open Source Pledge initiative, it's clear there's a growing understanding that open source needs steady, ongoing support, not just occasional contributions to stay healthy and sustainable.
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