At this year’s Open Source Summit in Denver, we caught up with Ildiko Vancsa, Director of Community at the OpenInfra Foundation, to talk about the Foundation’s integration into the Linux Foundation and what that means for the future of open source.

“This is the first month for us under the Linux Foundation umbrella,” said Vancsa, highlighting the new opportunities for cross-foundation collaboration. “It feels like a big family coming together and an opportunity for our ecosystems to work even closer together.”

Burnout, Layoffs, and the Open Source Labor Gap

One of the most pressing topics Vancsa brought to everyone’s attention at the event is maintainer burnout—a persistent problem in open source communities made worse by ongoing tech layoffs and rising AI expectations.

“No projects have ever said that, Oh, we have just enough or too many contributors, especially maintainers,” she said, referencing her talk titled What Do Legislations Have to Do With Tackling Maintainer Burnout? 

Most companies, she noted, focus their open source efforts downstream—applying patches internally rather than contributing upstream. And even when they do contribute changes upstream, they often don’t take on the responsibility of maintaining those open source projects.

They’re not actively involved in code reviews or ongoing maintenance within those communities. As a result, while there’s growing demand from the commercial sector, there’s not enough investment in the community side. She explained that, in the long run, companies will actually benefit from an upstream-first approach, as both their own products and the open source code they depend on will become more sustainable.

AI Won’t Replace Maintainers (Yet)

Touching on the AI hype cycle, Vancsa addressed the growing misconception that generative AI can replace human developers. “AI can’t really just replace people as is,” she said. “AI code still needs to be reviewed closely. It’s not something that… programmers will be replaced by AI bots anytime soon.” Rather than replacing the workforce, AI introduces new demands: integration, legal oversight, community engagement, and ethical governance.

This, Vancsa argued, makes open source roles—not just developers, but DevRel, legal, and OSPO professionals—more important than ever.

Building Edge Infrastructure for AI Workloads

Vancsa also announced the finalization of a new OpenInfra white paper titled Next Generation Edge Computing Architectures for AI/ML Use Cases.

Drafted by the OpenInfra Edge Computing working group, which has been exploring the technology area for the intersection of edge and AI, the paper explores how resource-constrained edge environments can support AI workloads, offering technical foundations for building next-gen infrastructure.

“The group has been exploring the technology area for the intersection of edge and AI,” she explained. “It’s not really a fleshed-out space yet.”

Vancsa hopes the white paper will be a springboard for cross-community collaboration: “We are now inviting everyone in the open source and all-source ecosystem to come together and collaborate on how to build these edge infrastructures for the next generation AI workloads.”

Scaling Community Support in a Broader Ecosystem

As OpenInfra expands into the larger Linux Foundation family, Vancsa is focused on scaling sustainable community models. “We’re working closely with community managers across projects to identify bottlenecks, share metrics, and improve contributor experiences,” she said.

New regulations like Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) may soon require companies to take a more active role in maintaining the open source projects they rely on. According to Vancsa, foundations must help communities prepare to receive that investment. The goal is to ensure communities are accessible, inclusive, and ready for long-term collaboration, she added.