Spotify announces the recipients of its inaugural 2022 FOSS Fund, which helps pay the developers of independent projects.
The company first announced the creation of its Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Fund last month to help fund the development of projects that benefit everyone. The fund’s committee reviewed 18 eligible candidates (from an initial pool of 59 submissions) to select the eight recipients of the inaugural fund. The recipients share the fund’s starting budget of 100,000 EUR.
2022 Spotify FOSS Fund Recipients:
Byte Buddy
Byte Buddy is a code generation and manipulation library. The library enables the creation and modification of Java classes during an application’s runtime without the help of a compiler. Thousands of references to it exist within Spotify’s code, and the dedicated developer behind Byte Buddy is receiving 13,000 EUR from the fund.
MUI
Material UI is an open-source React framework that Spotify uses as the foundation of the UI for its developer portal, Backstage, which Spotify open-sourced in 2020. MUI is receiving 13,000 EUR from the fund.
protoc-jar
Described as a “simple convenience JAR that embeds protoc compiler binaries for Linux, Mac/OSX, and Windows, providing some protability across the major platforms,” Spotify uses Procotol Buffer messages “in batch (non-realtime) pipelines to store intermediate data on GCS.” The project is receiving 3,000 EUR, its self-imposed maximum allowed amount.
QOS.CH
Spotify describes QOS.CH as “a core developer on log4j 1.x, reload4j, slf4j, and logback, which are critical to not only us, but most of the internet.” QOS.CH is receiving 13,000 EUR.
Testcontainers
Testcontainers is a Java testing library that “provides lightweight, throwaway instances of common databases, Selenium web browsers, or anything else that can run in a Docker container — as evidenced by the thousands of applications that reference Testcontainers at Spotify.” Testcontainers is receiving 13,000 EUR.
urllib3
One of the most heavily utilized Python packages with over three billion downloads a year, urllib3 is the fourth most-used Python library inside Spotify’s code and will receive 13,000 EUR from the fund.
Xiph
Non-profit foundation Xiph.org maintains the audio codecs core to Spotify’s audio delivery framework. It was the number one nomination from the Spotify coding community and will receive 19,000 EUR from the fund.
Yarn
Yarn helps structure web projects, scripts, dependencies, packaging, and distribution. A part of Spotify’s “Golden Path” for websites, Yarn is receiving 13,000 EUR.
“Spotify’s developers are grateful for all these amazing, worthwhile projects,” the announcement concludes. “But of course, it’s the people behind the projects who we really want to thank with our support.” Spotify promises a follow-up post with statements from the fund’s recipients “about the impact of the fund and more.”