Pressure to commercialize
As open source tools in environmental research gain traction through wider adoption, external stakeholders such as funders or universities often ask about their business models. They want to understand not only the return on their initial investment, but also the long-term path to sustainability to reduce reliance on grant funding. This often results in a tension between maintaining openness and achieving perceived “commercial value” that can result in locking down (parts of) a tool to manage risk or enable monetization. However, open source does not necessarily limit financial value as it can reduce duplication and is at times more financially viable.
Solutions
1.
Explore revenue sharing models and dual licensing
As revenue generation is often necessary to sustain tools in the long-term, consider models that don't require you to limit access to tools or data, as well as approaches to distributing revenue in ways that can support the communities with whom you have collaborated, even if indirectly.
2.
Establish stewardship agreements
Establish clear stewardship agreements that define how the project will be maintained and governed, and evolve over time. These agreements should clarify decision making power among contributors and community members, safeguard community interests, and define how profits will be disbursed if or when the pressure to commercialize arises.
3.
Engage with a fiscal sponsor
Fiscal sponsorship is a model in which a nonprofit organization offers its legal and tax-exempt status to groups or projects engaged in activities aligned with its mission. This can be especially useful if the project would like to apply for and receive grants or donations for continued development.
Know of another resource or solution?
Resources
Open Source Project Revenue Strategies: Sustainable Funding for Free Software
Open Source Project Revenue Strategies: Sustainable Funding for Free Software covers revenue sharing models such as donations, support services, and dual licensing models for free and open source projects to adopt.
GOSH Community Distributed Manufacturing Templates & Procedures
The Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) has shared Community Distributed Manufacturing Templates & Procedures to support the stewardship of open or shared infrastructure, in this case open scientific instruments. This template has been used by the OpenFlexure project who receives a portion of revenue from at least one of their vendors.
Sponsorship providers
Special organizations exist for the purpose of fiscally sponsoring projects. While each project has individual needs that should be independently assessed, a non-conclusive list of Fiscal Sponsorship providers includes: Open Source Collective, Aspiration Technology, Allied Media Foundation, Code for Science and Society, and Open Science Hardware Foundation.
Open hardware is economically efficient and generates a massive return on public investment
"Open hardware is economically efficient and generates a massive return on public investment" shares helpful framing for how free and open source hardware enables scientists to build custom scientific tools at a fraction of the cost of proprietary alternatives.
The Value of Open Source Software
If you need to advocate for the cost savings of using open source tools, "The Value of Open Source Software," analyzes the economic and social impact of open source software (OSS) by quantifying both its supply-side and demand-side value. And "Economic savings for scientific free and open source technology: A review" is a study conducted on the potential economic savings of using open source hardware.