Open Collective announces the cessation of its activities
Recently the news was announced that the Open Collective Foundation, a non-profit organization that has been dedicated to providing financial and legal support to non-profit projects, has made the decision to close at the end of 2024, as the organization never reached financial balance.
As such, the Open Collective Foundation, It was made up of several independent legal entities, which were involved in the maintenance of the ecosystem and above all, were the responsible for offering services to organize the collection of donations and financing of non-profit projects.
El reason behind closure from the Open Collective Foundation, lies in the inefficiency of the business model used, considering the complexity of the services provided and the commissions paid to Open Collective Inc. At the end of last year, the organization suspended accepting new applications and tried to develop a strategy to address this situation.
In recent years, the Open Collective ecosystem has seen rapid growth. While the four organizations mentioned have historically been close partners, as they have grown, they have also become increasingly distinct from each other and are completely separate in their functions, despite their similarities in name and brand. Thus, the Open Collective Foundation has made this decision completely independently.
Open Collective's understanding of the situation
Over the past year, OCF has made us aware of growing technology needs, which we have been responding to with new features and other forms of support. It appears that, despite our shared efforts, the OCF has not found a viable and sustainable path forward. We do not know the exact details of the decision to dissolve OCF. We have to trust that OCF had a good reason for doing this, but still, we can't help but be deeply saddened that this happened.
For those who do not know about the Open Collective, they should know that this It is widely used by a large number of renowned projects within open source, among which we can mention distributions such as Solus, LibreELEC, Manjaro, NixOS and EndeavourOS, as well as applications such as KeePassXC, FreeCAD, FreeCAD, Curl, among others.
Importantly Manjaro y Endeavor receive financial support from the organization Open Collective EuropeWhile Nix OS (via the Stichting NixOS Foundation) and the other projects on the list are supported by the organization Open Source Collective and fortunately, these projects will not be affected by the closure of the Open Collective Foundation.
Additionally, the Open Collective Foundation has provided funding to approximately 600 collectives, primarily related to topics such as the environment, food, agriculture, and volunteerism. However, starting March 15, accepting donations will be suspended, and starting September 30, withdrawing funds for these groups will stop.
It is worth mentioning that the organization Open Collective Foundation, has other related entities, which are:
- Open Collective Inc: This company is the main driver of the ecosystem. Responsible for maintaining the collaborative financing platform OpenCollective. Fund management, including receiving, storing and sending funds, is delegated to individual organizations that can connect to the platform.
- Open Source Collective: This nonprofit organization provides financial support specifically for open source software projects.
- Open Collective Europe: Another entity associated with the ecosystem.
It should be noted that all of these organizations are completely independent and have their own staff and have specific objectives, despite the similarity in their names. For example, the Open Source Collective focuses on supporting open source projects, while Open Collective Inc is responsible for the Open Collective platform.
In addition, it is mentioned that despite the closure from the Open Collective Foundation, the other entities will continue to operate. The Open Collective crowdfunding platform will continue to be used by many open source projects to raise donations. The change refers exclusively to the cessation of activities of the non-profit organization Open Collective Foundation, registered in the United States and which used the services provided by Open Collective Inc.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.