The first GitHub Accelerator cohort
GitHub Accelerator, announced in November 2022, is a 10-week program that gives open source maintainers an initial $20K sponsorship to work on their project, along with workshops and guidance from open source leaders. The aim is durable funding streams for their work — helping maintainers who want a full-time career in open source take a first step.
The 2023 cohort is the program's first: 20 projects and 32 participants spread across Argentina, Australia, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, and the US. More than 1,000 applications came in, and selection was handled with help from a selection committee that also broadened the team's sense of which topics the program needed to cover. Applicants varied by industry, by layer of the software stack, by project maturity and current funding, and by what they considered a sustainable endpoint.
The projects
| Project | Purpose |
|---|---|
| analogjs/analog | Analog is a fullstack meta-framework to build applications and websites with Angular |
| Atri-Labs/atrilabs-engine | The Python web framework to build production-grade apps |
| bigskysoftware/htmx | Makes AJAX, Web Sockets, etc. available directly in HTML |
| code-hike/codehike | Tools for building all types of code walkthroughs: blogs, docs, slides, tutorials, etc. |
| DioxusLabs/dioxus | Friendly React-like GUI library for desktop, web, mobile, and more, written in Rust. |
| EddieHubCommunity/BioDrop | Connecting with your audience with a single link, showcasing your content and projects. |
| FashionFreedom/Seamly2D | Design CAD to democratize and de-centralize fashion design & production. |
| fastai/nbdev | Increase developer productivity by 10x with a new exploratory programming workflow. |
| formbricks/formbricks | We’re building all essential form functionality. Modular, customizable & extendable. |
| GyulyVGC/sniffnet | Cross-platform application to comfortably monitor and analyse network traffic |
| JessicaTegner/pypandoc | Pypandoc provides a thin wrapper for pandoc, a universal document converter. |
| mockoon/mockoon | Mockoon is the easiest and quickest way to design and run mock REST APIs. |
| nuxt/nuxt | An intuitive framework for building web applications, built for the edge. |
| responsively-org/responsively-app | A dev-tool for web developers that aid in faster responsive web page development. |
| simonw/datasette | An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data |
| spyder-ide/spyder | The scientific Python development environment |
| strawberry-graphql/strawberry | A GraphQL library for Python that leverages type annotations 🍓 |
| termux/termux-app | A terminal emulator for Android that provides 2000+ linux packages to code on phone |
| bebop/poly | Poly is a fast, well tested Go package for engineering organisms. |
| trpc/trpc | End-to-end typesafe APIs made easy. Never write another API contract again. |
Sessions and what comes after the 10 weeks
Weekly sessions with open source thought leaders run alongside the maintainers' ongoing work on their projects. Topics on the agenda include:
- open source licensing and governance
- setting funding goals
- working with companies, getting sponsorships, and fundraising skills
- prioritizing issues and onboarding new contributors
- securing your project
- managing tough conversations, building partnerships, and keeping communities safe
At the end of the program, GitHub will publish an update on what this first experiment in bridge funding and skill building taught the team, and on what comes next for the projects. Those learnings are meant to be shared with the wider community.
Funding models still vary
The cohort spans a wide range of possible open source business models. Many maintainers want to sustain their work full-time, but their picture of financial stability differs — which is why the program supports projects testing new routes to durable funding.
For organizations that want to back the projects they depend on, GitHub Sponsors now supports organization-funded sponsorships, and bulk sponsorships let an organization see its sponsorable dependencies and sponsor as many as it likes in a single checkout.
Join us as we explore how to nourish a thriving open source ecosystem.
