how many others were able to join and build for FOSS companies in the last 3 years of FOSS United’s rapid growth ?
Here is a non exhaustive list of organizations that we have worked with or are talking to for hiring from within the FOSS United community, apart from the ones you already mentioned -
- Zerodha Tech
- Tiger Analytics
- True Beacon
- Bruno
- Juspay (they were at IndiaFOSS 2024 for hiring and got triple digit applications. They were able to close multiple openings and are returning to IndiaFOSS 2025 as a sponsor.
- Plane
- Tech4Good Community
- Scribbler
- Mecha
- Tooljet
- Othor
- Testzeus
At least half of these companies were able to close their openings in very short durations, and several others went ahead and interviewed the candidates we had referred. At times when we can’t think of people to refer, we still try our best to spread word about the opening wherever possible.
A slightly more detailed blog post on this should come out soon. Unfortunately getting testimonials from orgs that have hired through us has been a tedious process.
Shouldn’t that be a good metric to judge upon ? Imagine 10 teenagers joining Open Source Product companies every month through FOSS United’s connections. FOSS United literally becomes the talent and hiring ground for companies in and out of India.
This is a good point. A hiring program at FOSS United is in the works. We now have a huge network of companies that are actively hiring, and of volunteers/community members whom we’ve known for perhaps even several years now (and can easily vouch for their skills - not just technical but even teamwork etc.)
Ideally this will also tie up nicely with the upcoming FOSS pledge revamp, FOSS clubs, Season of Commits etc.
Shouldn’t that be the first priority of the organization ?
Nope. The hiring program is a good long term goal but I wouldn’t make it my first priority. There is no dearth of hiring platforms, and each of them started with similar visions.
In my honest opinion, now it just looked like a media company giving reports of their analytical data to some of their Venture Capitalist investor.
Currently, I can’t really fathom by what I mean when I say the word “impact”. It surely, isn’t what you mentioned above, but I can’t really say. This is not impact, impact is like a butterfly effect of kindness being shared and passed on.
Exactly, so how else do we measure impact? Butterfly effects are by nature difficult to quantify.
If the governance board/community/donors can propose a framework to measure impact, we can try to report on it. But if not, sharing all the numbers we have is the most we can do right?
On impact/vision/mission
I also haven’t been able to find clear answers to the long term mission/vision of FOSS United. I won’t be surprised if everyone inside and outside the team has their own mission statements for the org. From my experience of being associated with the org for 2 years (volunteer,intern,full-timer), I have tried to come up with certain broad goals of the foundation for my own reference and have also tried to put existing programs in these buckets -
-
Enabling the creation and sustenance of quality FOSS in India - The grants program should evolve to something much larger than just payouts. We can help grantees not just with money but time, connections, branding, community building, hiring, fundraising, discoverability etc. This has started happening to some extent already. Events, Grants and even our Tech Policy efforts fit in this vertical.
-
Ensuring bettter engineers come out of India - There is enough discourse around the problems with the Indian education system. FOSS events act as a good first step to spread awareness. Setting up tinker spaces (can just be a classroom), integration of FOSS in the curriculum (along with provision of academic credits for FOSS activities), access and visibility to the Indian FOSS ecosystem and projects/maintainers, programs to contribute to FOSS ,a hiring pipeline which shows students they don’t always have to go to big tech etc. are good long term goals IMO. FOSS Clubs, our FOSS &S/W engg efforts, Season of Commits, FOSSHack, Hiring Program fit into this vertical.
-
Enabling discourse around FOSS policy in India - Building credibility for FOSS United and forming partnerships with industry, academia and policy makers helps us build a voice in important policy discussions. We also need to ensure we nurture more FOSS policy advocates who defend and advocate for the FOSS movement at the larger stage. The NLS study, ESP, GCPP scholarships all fit into this vertical. As highlighted multiple times before, policy work is a slow process and naturally difficult to highlight alongside output metrics for other programs.