Fund the open-source (OSS) fixes your team actually needs
Your product depends on open-source libraries – but when you hit a critical bug or need a feature in a project you don’t own, you’re stuck waiting. OtterSource is being built to change that.
It’s a bounty marketplace for public issues. You link a GitHub issue, post a reward, and OtterSource handles the rest: escrow, developer matching, and payout only when the PR is actually merged. Stack rewards with others, get results faster. If it doesn’t ship? Full refund.
Developers get 80% of the bounty. Project maintainers get 20%. The OSS license stays untouched. No upfront fees, no subscriptions – just outcomes.
Where things stand
OtterSource is live but not yet fully operational. The reason is straightforward: running a two-sided marketplace that holds and moves money between parties turns out to be a different category of problem than a typical software product. Payment institution licensing under EU regulations, DAC7 income reporting for contributors, and fee economics that don’t work at small bounty sizes – these are real constraints that take time to navigate properly. We’re working through them. Until they’re resolved, OtterSource won’t process actual bounty payments.
The mission hasn’t changed. Open source work should pay the people who actually do it – contributors and maintainers both. The path to making that happen is taking longer than expected, but it’s worth doing right.
If you care about open source funding and want to follow where this goes, visit ottersource.com and sign up for updates.
