Hey there folks 
On behalf of the core team that maintains open source design we wanted to gather some thoughts.
So FOSS Backstage is run by a group called Plain Schwarz . They are hosting a design day after the main conference for FOSS Backstage (and also platform open source design talks at the FOSS Backstage event).
The team ran a design day in 2024 completely solo as they acknowledge and support the value that design and designers have to offer FOSS widely and they wanted to be part of ensuring designers that want to gather around FOSS topics have a dedicated time and day for that.
In 2024, a few open source design community members attended, spoke, hosted and supported the event with their time, enthusiasm and ticket fees.
This year FOSS Backstage (Plain Schwarz) reached out to the core team of OSD to see if we’d support the cost of venue hire for (€1300 euros) the design day as a way of showing our support and solidarity with an event for open source designers. We currently have $11,251.69 in our Open Source Design - Open Collective funds that we have only really dented with posters, stickers and other conference merch here and there. We did decide via community poll around 3 years ago that our funds should be spent on supporting internship opportunities for designers at OSS projects and one thing we’ve asked FOSS Backstage in return for venue hire fees being paid by us is to talk about our intentions for continuing internship planning and asking any OSS projects at the FOSS Backstage event to be involved to make that happen.
We discussed this briefly on the last community call but I’d also like to gather thought and opinions here on whether this feels aligned with Open Source Design’s community mission/goals and manifesto.
I (Eriol) will be checking in on this thread periodically to understand more about y’alls thoughts and opinions and I’ll gently remind this is not a place for unconstructive arguing and to be respecful of everyones thoughts and opinions on the matter 