It's not easy getting an open-source company off the ground, Appwrite wants to help

Launching an open-source company isn't easy. Even the biggest pure-play open-source company, Red Hat, got its humble start in founding CEO Bob Young's wife's sewing closet. More recently, when Appwrite,  a Backend as a Service (BaaS) business, CEO and founder Eldad Fux literally had "his back to the wall." Luckily for him, Fux obtained seed funding at the last minute. 

By April 2022, Appwrite has gotten $27 million in funding. Looking ahead, the open-source Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform for web, mobile, and flutter developers with its integrated REST APIs future looks bright. With 27 full-time Appwriters and a community of over 150,000 developers, Appwrite may become a major developer success story. 

That's great, but there was a lot of terror along the way. So, Fux has decided that he needs to give back to the open-source community.

The company is doing this with the "Appwrite OSS Fund." The idea behind the fund is to support open-source developers and their projects.

Here's how it works:

You apply for it from hereIf you're selected, you get $2,500 in fundingYou'll be paid via GitHub sponsors or Open CollectiveYou can nominate yourself or any other maintainers you knowThere is no bar to the number of nominations you make -- with the exception of one project per nomineeOnce your application is received, a response email will be within 15-30 daysTo review the applications, we will set up a committee composed of the core Appwrite team and representatives of the Appwrite community to assess all applications. The committee will decide how the funding will be best used by applying projects based on multiple factors, ranging from project popularity, technological impact, innovation, and the current project's financial capabilities.

Now, this is not millions. You won't be launching a company with this funding. And, it certainly doesn't address the fundamental problem of early-stage open-source project funding.  But, if you have an idea and you need just enough cash to get your show on the road, this may be exactly what you need.

See also

Open source backend as a service Appwrite gets $10M seed funding to commercialize tractionFor security alone, we could try paying open-source projects properlyRust Foundation launches Rust Community Grants program