# Episode 270: Ben Nickolls & Andrew Nesbitt on Ecosyste.ms

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832/episode-270-ben-nickolls-andrew-nesbitt-on-ecosyste-ms
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832/episode-270-ben-nickolls-andrew-nesbitt-on-ecosyste-ms.md
Podcast: [Sustain](https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832)
Published: 2025-05-23T14:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcast.sustainoss.org/270
Audio file: https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/27729c65-f4a6-4496-8c86-820e7f13b285/b6ee5adb-e85f-413f-b28a-871ab1ff27a0.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/sustain-796832/episodes/episode-270-ben-nickolls-andrew-nesbitt-on-ecosyste-ms
Duration seconds: 2666

## Resource

Guests Ben Nickolls | Andrew Nesbitt Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes In this episode of Sustain, host Richard is joined by guests Ben Nickolls and Andrew Nesbitt to discuss the ecosyste.ms project. They explore how ecosyste.ms collects and analyzes metadata from various open-source projects to create a comprehensive database that can help improve funding allocation. The discussion covers the importance of funding the most critical open-source projects, the existing gaps in funding, and the partnership between ecosyste.ms and Open Source Collective to create funding algorithms that support entire ecosystems. They also talk about the challenges of maintaining data, reaching out to project maintainers, and the broader implications for the open-source community. Hit the download button now! [00:01:58] Andrew and Ben explain ecosyste.ms, what it does, and how it compares to Libraries.io. [00:04:59] Ecosyste.ms tracks metadata, not the packages themselves, and enriches data via dependency graphs, committers, issues, SBOMs, and more. [00:06:54] Andrew talks about finding 1,890 Git hosts and how many critical projects live outside GitHub. [00:08:37] There’s a conversation on metadata uses and SBOM parsing. [00:12:49] Richard inquires about the ecosystem.ms funds on their website which Andrew explains it’s a collaboration between Open Collective and ecosyste.ms. that algorithmically distributes funds to the most used, not most popular packages. [00:15:45] Ben shares how this is different from previous projects and brings up a past project, “Back Your Stack” and explains how ecosyste.ms is doing two things differently. [00:18:59] Ben explains how it supports payouts to other platforms and encourages maintainers to adopt funding YAML files for automation. Andrew touches on e…

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