There are many strategies to fund open source software development. None of them is a silver bullet. Indeed, OSS sustainability is still a major concern. And WordPress has an original approach to this challenge, called Five for the future.
In short, Five for the Future encourages organizations to contribute five percent of their resources to WordPress development. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg proposed this benchmark to maintain a “golden ratio” of contributors to users.
In this opinion piece I wrote for PostStatus I discuss whether Five for the Future should also cover research initiatives as a useful contribution to WordPress sustainability and some of the topics and development dimensions that could be the target of a first set of research questions.