NixOS Foundation: Draft proposal for grant program and purpose-bound funding

Infinisil · August 24, 2026, 8:14pm

For a while now, we’ve been working on a proposal to introduce two new related parts to the funding model of the NixOS Foundation:

Grant program: A way for contributors to propose ideas and get paid by the NixOS Foundation for delivering milestones. The funds can come from both general-purpose donations and purpose-bound funding.
Purpose-bound funding: A way for companies to provide funding for specific grants proposals or team initiatives.

Please check out the full proposal:

github.com/NixOS/org

Proposal: Grant program and purpose-bound funding

main ← grants-and-initiatives

opened 11:43AM - 15 Jun 26 UTC

infinisil

+130 -0

In recent months, primarily the NixOS Foundation board members, me and @ra33it0,… have been drafting this proposal to fill some gaps in the NixOS Foundation's funding model. Note that this is not yet fully board or SC approved, which we'll need to get before this is implemented. ### Brief summary Motivation: - Enable companies to finance Nix ecosystem improvements in a more streamlined and transparent way - Enable contributors to get paid for working on Nix ecosystem improvements in a more streamlined way - Provide a way to connect funding partners to contributing individuals, e.g. for when: - Individuals don't want to be employed/contracted directly by a company, and don't want to be limited by receiving funding from only one company - Companies don't want to employ/contract an individual directly, and want to provide funding in a more flexible way to multiple individuals - Companies want a trusted third-party to hold the funds until work is complete - Strengthen the ecosystem by providing funding resources to contributors using general NixOS Foundation donation profits not tied to any companies There are two inter-related parts to this proposal: - Grant program: A way for contributors to propose ideas and get paid by the NixOS Foundation for delivering milestones. The funds can come from both general-purpose donations and purpose-bound funding. - Purpose-bound funding: A way for companies to provide funding for specific grants proposals or team initiatives. ### Current status - [x] Revised after feedback from board and SC members - [ ] Revised after feedback from official teams - Pinging these teams for feedback (somewhat arbitrary subset from [the homepage](https://nixos.org/community/#teams)): @NixOS/nixpkgs-core, @NixOS/security @NixOS/infra @NixOS/marketing-team @NixOS/moderation @NixOS/cuda-maintainers @nixos/nix-team @NixOS/documentation-team @NixOS/nix-formatting @NixOS/ngi @NixOS/nixos-hardware @NixOS/hydra-maintainers - [ ] Shared with the wider community - [ ] Shared with companies - [ ] Approved by board and SC If we need to add more context behind individual parts, we'll add this on demand.

This is currently just a draft, but we’ve already made many iterations after feedback. At this point we’re reaching out to the wider community and companies, with a plan to iterate once more, before we get this approved by the board and SC, and then implementing the initial version. We also plan to iterate more once we see how it works in practice.

If you have feedback, please leave a comment in a PR thread, or reach out to foundation@nixos.org until 2026-09-03T21:59:00Z, thank you!

— NixOS Foundation board (@infinisil, @ra33it0, @lassulus, @ron, @ryantrinkle)

ahoneybun · August 24, 2026, 9:07pm

Thank you for the work in this and other projects to you and the board!

cafkafk · August 24, 2026, 9:30pm

Ahh awesome this is finally going into the last phase. Means we’ll go live with it soon