Non-profit organization Open Collective Foundation, which provides financial and legal support to non-commercial projects, has decided to close at the end of 2024. It is important to note that within the Open Collective ecosystems, there are several independent legal entities involved in supporting services for organizing the collection of donations and financing open projects. Apart from Open Collective Foundation, there are Open Collective Inc, Open Source Collective, and Open Collective Europe.
Although these organizations share similarities in names, they are completely independent with their own staff and goals. For example, Open Source Collective focuses on financial support for open projects, while Open Collective Inc maintains the Open Collective joint funding platform. The management of funds is delegated to individual organizations that connect to the platform, including Open Collective Foundation which is now closing.
Other legal entities linked to the platform, like Open Source Collective, will continue to operate the joint funding platform Open Collective, which has supported many open projects in collecting donations. The closure of Open Collective Foundation only impacts the activities of the non-profit organization registered in the United States that utilized the services of Open Collective Inc for the joint funding platform.
The inefficiency of the business model and the complexity of services and commissions paid by Open Collective Inc are cited as reasons for the closure of Open Collective Foundation. The organization had suspended new applications and attempted to develop a financial strategy in the past year to address the challenges but ultimately deemed continued operations unsustainable.
Projects supported by Open Collective include manjaro, flatpak, nixos, gitea, endeavouros, keepassxc,