--- title: What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer... description: Alpha-Omega, the OpenSSF security grant initiative, has surpassed $20 million in funding since 2022, supporting dozens of open source projects through audits,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer Power Tool with Michael Winser | daily.dev og:description: Alpha-Omega, the OpenSSF security grant initiative, has surpassed $20 million in funding since 2022, supporting dozens of open source projects through audits,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/NXvCGqQ95.png og:image:alt: What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer Power Tool with Michael Winser og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer Power Tool with Michael Winser **[OpenSSF](https://daily.dev/sources/openssf)** · 31 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Alpha-Omega, the OpenSSF security grant initiative, has surpassed $20 million in funding since 2022, supporting dozens of open source projects through audits, security engineers in residence, and registry improvements. Michael Winser discusses the unsustainable economics of package registries — where costs scale upward with usage unlike open source software itself — and proposes that large companies paying modest usage fees could collectively fund registry operations. A major new initiative involves partnering with frontier AI model providers (Anthropic, Amazon, Google, GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI) to put AI-powered security tooling directly in maintainers' hands, countering the flood of low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports ('slop') by enabling maintainers to proactively find and fix issues on their own terms. The vision for 2026 includes a security trust graph covering 10,000 projects and workshops reaching 100,000 maintainers. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Alpha-Omega and how much funding has it distributed to open source security? Alpha-Omega is an OpenSSF initiative founded by Microsoft and Google that has distributed over $20 million in security grants since 2022, funding dozens of projects and ecosystems through audits, security engineers in residence, package registry improvements, and experimental work. In 2025 alone it invested nearly $6 million across fourteen projects and conducted sixty audits. _Maintainers weighing where security funding comes from can follow initiatives like this on daily.dev._ ### Why are package registries like npm and PyPI struggling financially even as usage grows? Package registry costs trend toward infinity as usage grows, since more downloads mean more malware checks, storage, and abuse, while open source software itself gets cheaper per user as adoption spreads. Registries are funded mostly by flat donations and infrastructure gifts from companies like Fastly and AWS, which mask real operational costs and leave no sustainable business model in place. _Developers relying on package registries can track proposals for funding their infrastructure on daily.dev._ ### How is AI making vulnerability reporting worse for open source maintainers? Low-barrier AI tooling lets anyone generate vulnerability reports at scale, flooding maintainers with low-context, hard-to-qualify findings that can take two to eight hours each to validate or refute. A coalition including Anthropic, Amazon, Google, GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI is funding maintainer-controlled AI tooling so maintainers can find and fix vulnerabilities on their own terms instead of fielding noisy third-party AI-generated reports. _Maintainers drowning in AI-generated bug reports can follow tooling responses like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AI Companies Put $12.5M Into Open Source Security to Fix a Problem Their Tools Helped Create](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-companies-put-12-5m-into-open-source-security-to-fix-a-problem-their-tools-helped-create-fqepn8wn7) · It's Foss · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [OpenSSF Newsletter – March 2026 – Open Source Security Foundation](https://daily.dev/posts/openssf-newsletter-march-2026-open-source-security-foundation-5vizalrer) · OpenSSF · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [On AI Slop vs OSS Security](https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-slop-vs-oss-security-3r2zp5whk) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Once a Maintainer: Mike Dalessio](https://daily.dev/posts/once-a-maintainer-mike-dalessio-pzskkgke4) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer Power Tool with Michael Winser","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95"},"datePublished":"2026-07-28T12:53:40.408Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:41:35.331Z","description":"Alpha-Omega, the OpenSSF security grant initiative, has surpassed $20 million in funding since 2022, supporting dozens of open source projects through audits,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"OpenSSF","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"OpenSSF","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--l6RJ5uPj--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774959959/logos/openssf?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/openssf"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"security,open-source","timeRequired":"PT31M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"OpenSSF","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/openssf"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What’s in the SOSS? #66: Turning AI into the Maintainer Power Tool with Michael Winser"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-in-the-soss-66-turning-ai-into-the-maintainer-power-tool-with-michael-winser-nxvcgqq95#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is Alpha-Omega and how much funding has it distributed to open source security?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Alpha-Omega is an OpenSSF initiative founded by Microsoft and Google that has distributed over $20 million in security grants since 2022, funding dozens of projects and ecosystems through audits, security engineers in residence, package registry improvements, and experimental work. 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