How Sunshine Reimagined FOSS
Open source has a funding problem. The code that runs the world is maintained by volunteers who often burn out.
We’ve tried donations. We’ve tried foundations. We’ve tried corporate sponsorship. Each helps but none solve the fundamental issue: there’s no direct connection between using software and funding its development.
Sunshine was an experiment in fixing this.
The Idea
What if funding open source worked like a cooperative? Contributors stake tokens to signal commitment. Users pay for bounties. The protocol routes funds to people doing the work.
No middlemen extracting fees. No grant committees picking winners. Just code contributions and the funds they attract.
How It Worked
Bounties: Anyone posts a bounty for a feature or fix. The funds are locked in a smart contract.
Claims: Developers claim bounties and do the work. Their stake is locked until completion.
Approval: A small group of maintainers approves the work. The bounty releases.
Reputation: Completed bounties build reputation. Reputation unlocks larger bounties.
What We Learned
The technical part worked. Smart contracts held funds securely. The reputation system functioned.
The hard part was social. Getting maintainers to participate requires changing their workflow. Getting users to fund requires them to think differently about software.
Crypto adds friction. Even users who want to pay find it annoying to acquire tokens and interact with wallets. The overhead only makes sense for large amounts.
The Bigger Picture
Sunshine didn’t become the solution. But the problem remains, and I think the direction is right.
Open source funding should be:
- Direct (contributor to funder, minimal intermediaries)
- Transparent (public record of contributions and payments)
- Permissionless (anyone can contribute, anyone can fund)
Blockchains enable this. The UX just isn’t there yet.
The next generation of funding infrastructure will probably look different from Sunshine. But it will share these properties. The old model, begging for donations and hoping corporations feel generous, doesn’t scale.
We need systems where funding flows automatically to where value is created. That’s hard to build. It’s also necessary.