Agree and Amplify: Funding Open Source as Digital Infrastructure

TL;DR

Open source software powers critical digital infrastructure, but funding rarely reaches the people maintaining it.  Dries Buytaert’s post on digital sovereignty makes a strong case for changing how governments and organizations invest in open source.  Recent sustainability challenges in projects like Tailwind show this isn’t theoretical.  If organizations rely on open source, contributing back (including funding) should be treated as a baseline responsibility, not optional goodwill.

I strongly agree with Dries Buytaert’s recent post, Funding Open Source for Digital Sovereignty.

This post is not a summary or a critique.  It’s an agreement and an attempt to extend the argument into the broader open source ecosystem, especially WordPress.

Dries articulates a problem that’s been hiding in plain sight for years.  Open source software underpins much of our digital world, yet the people and projects responsible for building and maintaining that software are routinely bypassed when funding decisions are made.

Dries frames this through government procurement and digital sovereignty, but the issue is broader and structural.  We see the same dynamics play out across the private sector and across ecosystems of every size.

I’ve been thinking about this recently in the context of projects like Tailwind CSS.  Tailwind has enormous adoption, deep influence on modern web development, and a thriving ecosystem built around it.  And yet, like many widely used open source projects, it has struggled at times to turn that success into stable, long-term funding for maintenance and stewardship.

That’s the paradox: popularity is often mistaken for sustainability.  In reality, widespread usage can increase the maintenance burden faster than funding models evolve to support it.

In many ways, this starts to resemble a modern version of the tragedy of the commons.  Open source is a shared resource that everyone benefits from, but when responsibility for sustaining it is diffuse, the rational short-term behavior is to underinvest and hope someone else picks up the slack.  The result isn’t sudden failure, but slow erosion through burnout, deferred maintenance, and growing risk.

This is not a Tailwind-specific problem.  It’s a pattern.

The same tension exists in the WordPress ecosystem.

WordPress powers businesses, governments, nonprofits, publishers, and educational institutions worldwide.  Entire industries are built on top of it.  Economic value flows through hosting companies, agencies, SaaS platforms, and integrators, while upstream projects and maintainers often rely on voluntary contribution or a relatively small pool of sponsors.

Programs like Five for the Future have helped normalize contribution as part of doing business, and WordPress has benefited enormously from sponsored contributors who show up across multiple release cycles.  But even here, the gap between value extracted and value reinvested remains real.  When budgets tighten, open source contributions are often treated as optional, despite supporting mission-critical systems.

What resonates most in Dries’ post is the framing of open source as shared infrastructure.

We already accept this model elsewhere.  Roads, utilities, and public services are funded because society depends on them.  Open source software plays a similar role in the digital world.  If organizations rely on it to operate, scale, and serve people, contributing back (including funding) should be a baseline responsibility, not an act of goodwill.  If contribution is a responsibility rather than charity, it’s worth being clear about what responsible, sustainable support actually looks like.

So what does sustainable support actually look like?

We already have working examples:

• Red Hat has shown how commercial success can directly fund upstream Linux development over decades.
• Drupal benefits from contribution-aware procurement models where vendors are evaluated on how they support the upstream project.
• WordPress has demonstrated the impact of sustained, sponsored contributor programs tied to releases, security, and long-term maintenance.
• Government-backed efforts like the Sovereign Tech Fund recognize open source as critical infrastructure worthy of direct public investment.

These approaches differ, but they share a common trait: funding the people and projects doing the upstream work, not just the layers built on top of them.

Dries’ suggestion that procurement and vendor selection should explicitly account for upstream open source contributions is especially compelling.  It aligns incentives toward long-term sustainability instead of short-term delivery.  It also rewards organizations that treat open source stewardship as part of their operating model, not a marketing line item.

Whether we’re talking about government digital services, enterprise platforms, or widely adopted frameworks like Tailwind, the lesson is the same: popularity is not a funding model.

If we care about digital sovereignty, resilience, and innovation, we can’t assume open source will take care of itself.  It won’t.  It’s built and maintained by people, and those people need consistent, institutional support to do this work well.

So here’s the question I think every organization should be asking itself:

If your business, platform, or public service depends on open source, how are you directly funding and sustaining the projects and people you rely on?

Dries’ post is an important signal in that direction, and I hope it pushes more organizations to answer that question honestly.  If that answer is unclear or uncomfortable, that’s probably the point.