Free and Open Source Software is eating the world, but is at the same time a victim of its own success. Large enterprises rely on libraries maintained by a single individual who never suspected their project would take off like it did - and they are in over their head. Sometimes projects are handed over to other maintainers, who don’t always have the best of intentions. Individuals or organizations may restrict the use of their technology or EOL versions of their software, posing real challenges to organizations depending on that technology. How can we as organizations, foundations and initiatives, and individuals contribute to the viability and sustainability of open source? What role could an Open Source Program Office (or OSPO for short) play? What are some of the ways to support open source developers? Find out when - and how - to contribute with your time, versus when to pull out your checkbook. We need better support systems to avoid maintainer burnout, and to avoid regressions from creeping into our systems.

Floor is a Staff Developer Advocate at Aiven(.io), the open source DBaaS company. Previously she worked in Developer Relations roles at Grafana Labs and Microsoft. She co-organizes devopsdays