Konstantin Vinogradov, an open source and infra VC investor, and his co-founders are building the first permanent funding model for critical open source infrastructure. We dive into why OSE stands a chance at battling the Nebraska problem, and how Evil Martians contributed as a pro-bono donor.

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Martian Chronicles

The Open Source Endowment (OSE) is a new permanent funding model for critical open source infrastructure, modeled after university endowments. Rather than spending donations directly, OSE invests them and distributes only the annual returns (targeting 5% spend rate) as microgrants to underfunded but critical OSS projects. Grant selection is algorithmic, scoring projects on value (downloads, dependents) and risk (maintainer count, security score, existing funding). The initiative addresses the 'Nebraska problem'—foundational software maintained by one or two unpaid people that entire industries depend on. PostCSS, for example, used by Google and Facebook on 0.5% of all web pages, earned only ~$30/month over 13 years. The fund currently holds $678K+ with first grants planned for Q2 2026. Evil Martians contributed pro-bono design work for the OSE brand and website. Notable supporters include the co-founders of HashiCorp, Nginx, Vue.js, cURL, and ClickHouse.

Solving the Nebraska problem with the Open Source Endowment—Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog

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