The NSF announces $21M to fund open source

> Importantly, the POSE program is not intended to fund the development of open-source research products, including tools and artifacts

So it's not really dealing with the root problem is it? As they say, you (don't) get what you (don't) pay for.

> the program aims to fund new managing organizations that catalyze community-driven development and growth of the subject OSEs

So it's putting money in the pockets of people who won't actually do any work themselves but will try to get other people to work for free. But who are these workers who are somehow expected to work without pay? Let's see...

> The expected outcomes of the POSE program are (1) to grow the community of researchers who develop and contribute to OSE efforts, and (2) to enable pathways for the development of collaborative OSEs that could lead to new technology products or services that have broad societal impacts.

Of course! Try to get overworked and underpaid grad students and postdocs to do more software development without compensation, hopefully enabling companies (and possibly universities) to make a lot of money by commercializing that unpaid labor. After all, we're already largely paying these suckers in "publications", pipe dreams, and parchments - rather than actual dollars - but we can squeeze more out of them.

This seems to be the kind of magical thinking that views open source as a way to magically get high quality work done without hiring or paying anyone to do it. Though the strategy of exploiting the already exploited/vulnerable is innovative, I must admit.

"Importantly, the POSE program is not intended to fund the development of open-source research products, including tools and artifacts. The POSE program is also not intended to fund existing well-resourced open-source communities and ecosystems. Instead, the program aims to fund new managing organizations that catalyze community-driven development and growth of the subject OSEs."

The definition of "communities" and "ecosystems", and what role they will play in the development of open source projects feels very vague to me.

Are they seeking to create a new Apache Foundation? I can see a case for "Apache Foundation for X" type communities. But I'm of the opinion that what we really need at the moment is greater incentives for existing researchers who are already working on their projects to make their code modular, well-documented, and readable.

Larger communities such as Apache-for-X can be a second-order effect, but to make it the primary goal seems to me like putting the horse before the cart.

Crucially this isn't funding random open source projects or open source maintainers.

This is going directly to "foundations" which are nothing more than marketing organizations.

This is a huge waste of money.

$21M for open source but $16B for Ukraine. I imagine if they gave $16B to open source that we'd be in a much better place economically.