Current founder and CEO Thomas Markey started Fosshost after realising a lack of support and provision for the free and open-source software (FOSS) community.
He started Fosshost that provided distributed cloud computing. Fosshost has experienced rapid and significant growth, with more than 70 nodes and 200 open-source projects globally, beginning with one server and a handful of projects.
The Fosshost cloud platform is diverse and offers support for both x86 and ARM hosting compute power. Running these hardware variations comes with significant responsibility and overheads. Many open source developers heavily rely upon our charitable service to help accelerate, develop, build and design their projects.
Fosshost currently provides volunteering opportunities to more than 15 individuals globally who share a passion for using FOSS. Volunteers learn DevOps, automation, teamwork and Linux skills.
Projects are eligible to apply on our website, and we carry out a quick assessment to understand how we can support them, and we always try to say yes. We do not charge for our service and depend on our corporate and individual sponsors to provide hardware and donations.
Unfortunately, this is not enough.
Many large and established projects such as Rocky Linux, GNOME, KDE and Armbian benefit from our hosting services, which are used to aid, support and help with project development.
As we grow and expand, our hosting bills will increase, we will need to employ a full-time member of staff to help oversee and run our operation, and unexpected and emergency bills become more frequent.
We will use any funds to help:
1. Pay for a full-time member of staff to run Fosshost
2. Increase working capital to help cover running and operational costs
3. Purchase new infrastructure and core networking equipment
4. Cover unexpected emergency bills and general expansion costs