I am writing to inform you about a critical and time-sensitive situation facing the Open Source Lab (OSL). Over the past several years, we have been operating at a deficit due to a decline in corporate donations. While the Oregon State College of Engineering (CoE) has generously filled this gap, recent changes in university funding makes our current funding model no longer sustainable. As a result, our current funding model is no longer sustainable.

Unless we secure $250,000 in committed funds, the OSL will shut down later this year. I have reached out to our largest corporate sponsor and they are working to increase their support as we update our contract, but that still may not be enough.

For transparency, the $250,000 is broken down into the following roughly:

• Staff pay $150k (60%) (1 staff)
• Student pay $65k (26%) (8 students)
• Other expenses $35k (14%)

Other expenses include items such as hardware, travel, subscription services and other miscellaneous expenses needed to run the OSL day to day.

If any of you can assist or connect me with potential supporters, please reach out as soon as possible. I need to provide leadership with an update on any funding changes by Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Please reach out directly via donations@osuosl.org if you’re able to help us make it through this difficult time.

The OSU Foundation is an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, which provides many donors a tax advantage. Please contact the OSU Foundation directly if you have questions about your eligibility. You can donate directly to us by visiting our donation page.

OSL provides hosting for over 500 Free and Open Source Projects from all over the world. Over the course of its 22-year existence, the OSL has mentored over 130 students, many of whom have gone on to create their own companies and work throughout the larger tech ecosystem.

Some notable milestones over the years include:

• Provided hosting for Mozilla Firefox when they needed help in the early days and hosted the release of 1.0
• Was the home of the Apache Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, Kernel.org, Mozilla for many years
• Offers fast and reliable software mirroring for projects
• Currently provides infrastructure hosting for projects such as Drupal, Gentoo Linux, Debian, Fedora, phpBB, OpenID, Buildroot/Busybox, Inkscape, Cinc and many more!
• Virtual machines for x86, aarch64 and ppc64le are used by many projects for CI and other hosted services

Your commitment is crucial for us to move forward. I am available to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you for your continued support!

Lance Albertson, Director