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More money can pay for audits, security staff and better tools, but it cannot guarantee that open-source software will be secure everywhere or forever. That is the argument Matt Asay made in his May 16, 2022 InfoWorld analysis—not an official OpenSSF conclusion. OpenSSF’s later reporting shows that funded interventions can support concrete work; it does not establish an ecosystem-wide security improvement caused by the 2022 plan.
Why funding alone cannot solve open-source security
Open-source software is a varied ecosystem, not a single project with one security team and one set of priorities. Projects differ in purpose, resources and maintainer motivations. The components considered critical can also change, while new vulnerabilities continue to emerge. Asay’s argument is that funding and prioritization matter, but neither can create a lasting, universal guarantee across all projects.
The difficulty is partly one of selection: which components count as critical, and who decides? A centralized program can direct resources toward high-impact work, but a list of priorities cannot permanently capture every dependency or future risk. As OpenSSF general manager Brian Behlendorf put it during a press call, “there’s not one root cause or one root approach that’s going to address them all.” InfoWorld’s account of the plan and argument presents this as a reason to combine approaches rather than expect one funding decision to settle the problem.
What the 2022 OpenSSF plan proposed
After Security Summit II in May 2022, OpenSSF and the Linux Foundation announced a mobilization plan spanning ten work streams. The mix matters: it paired broad ecosystem capabilities with targeted support for important infrastructure, rather than proposing a single fix.
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- Security education
- Risk assessment
- Digital signatures
- Memory safety
- Incident response
- Improved vulnerability scanning
- Third-party code reviews
- Industry data sharing
- Software bill of materials (SBOM) tooling and training
- Stronger supply-chain security for key build systems, package managers and distribution systems
The OpenSSF mobilization plan describes these distinct areas of work. They address different points in the software supply chain, which is consistent with the idea that security needs more than one intervention.
What the funding figures do—and do not—mean
The May 12, 2022 announcement described an approximately $150 million plan over two years. It reported initial pledges exceeding $30 million from Amazon, Ericsson, Google, Intel, Microsoft and VMware. The announcement also cited an informal stakeholder poll reporting more than $110 million in existing spending and nearly 100 full-time equivalents focused on open-source security.
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These are different kinds of figures: a plan estimate, initial pledges and an informal poll about existing activity. They are not evidence that the full two-year target was raised, nor do they measure the security results of the spending. The Linux Foundation announcement supplies the figures and their context; they should not be read as a reconciled budget or a security-outcome evaluation.
What later activity demonstrates
OpenSSF’s 2025 Annual Report says Alpha-Omega delivered millions of dollars in grants and security services during Q1 and Q3 of that year. The report describes security personnel placed in major ecosystems and grants supporting audits and infrastructure improvements, including work involving the Linux kernel and Homebrew package manager.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11This is evidence that money can enable practical security work: staffing, review and infrastructure improvements. It is not evidence that the named projects became invulnerable, that the 2022 target was fully funded, or that these activities caused ecosystem-wide vulnerability declines. Those are distinct claims, and the report’s activity examples do not establish them. See the OpenSSF 2025 Annual Report for the organization’s account.
How to judge a security-funding effort
A useful assessment separates inputs and activities from measured outcomes. When comparing programs, ask:
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- Scale and duration: Is the amount a proposed estimate, money pledged, money spent, or recurring support?
- Selection: How are projects or ecosystem components chosen, and how often is that prioritization revisited?
- Type of support: Does the program fund maintainers, embed security staff, or pay for technical services such as audits?
- Outcome: What security result is measured, over what period, and against what baseline?
The 2022 plan describes multiple ecosystem-wide and targeted interventions; the 2025 report describes grants, staffing and audits. The cited announcements and report do not provide a common outcome measure that demonstrates one funding approach is superior or establishes a causal, ecosystem-wide improvement.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What project teams and users still need to do
Central funding can provide capacity and shared tools, but it does not remove the need for decisions at the project and user level. Project teams need to treat security work as part of maintenance, while organizations using open-source dependencies need to assess their own risks and respond to vulnerabilities. The practical implication of Asay’s argument is not that funding is useless; it is that money must support ongoing, varied work rather than be treated as a one-time purchase of security.
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