OTF has underpinned so many important open source tools - from Signal and Tor to training human rights defenders and journalists all over the world. It helps lower the barrier to entry for new projects and ideas. There is no chance we would have been able to build Umbrella App without it being there. At present there is no way traditional NGO funders can or will fund the gap. Most NGO funders don't understand or support tech.

Silicon Valley philantrophy essentially is too risk adverse to take up the slack when it comes to human rights and privacy issues. Some small domestic stuff in the US and a few bits and pieces here and there but very few have the guts to fund on a major scale human rights and privacy related stuff like training human rights defenders in China, journalists in Russia, researching privacy in Africa, privacy/encryption tools in XYZ etc.

It's vital that it's well continues independently without interference. The central role of underfunded open source projects that we all realised after SSL Heartbleed is an example of the risks of not having funders in this space.