Open source is often presented to mission-driven organizations as a technology choice. Our research suggests that durable adoption requires a different operating model; it requires both an investment in software creation, but also the necessary adoption infrastructure to sustain its use.
As DataKind expanded its own software portfolio, we studied implementation partnerships, governance arrangements, procurement structures, and business operations across four sector contexts. The pattern was consistent: technically mature open-source solutions fail to scale or persist when implementation, stewardship, and support capabilities remain external to the institutions responsible for long-term use.

We call the missing piece adoption infrastructure — the governance, implementation services, maintenance capacity, and partner ecosystems that turn open technology into durable public infrastructure. Proprietary vendors bake these functions into their business model. Open source ecosystems usually don't — leaving them fragmented, underfunded, or dependent on grant cycles that were never designed to sustain them.

This panel asks who should close that gap, and how. We'll examine the case for treating interoperability standards and shared IP as long-term public goods rather than one-off deliverables; why procurement processes built to buy licenses struggle to buy the implementation work adoption actually requires; and what it would mean for philanthropy specifically to fund infrastructure and stewardship rather than repeatedly funding new software.
Attendees will leave with a framework for diagnosing why open solutions stall after launch, and a set of priorities for funders, procurement teams, and adopting organizations who want their investments to actually last.