Outside your door stands a line of a few hundred people. They are patiently waiting for you to answer their questions, complaints, pull requests, and feature requests. You want to help all of them,…
What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
Outside your door stands a line of a few hundred people. They are patiently waiting for you to answer their questions, complaints, pull requests, and feature requests. You want to help all of them,…
I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainer
It works! I am now a full-time independent open-source maintainer. I'm announcing my first cohort of six clients, and sharing some details of how the model works.
Professional maintainers: a wake-up call
Open Source software runs the Internet, and by extension the economy. This is an undisputed fact about reality in 2021. And yet, the role of Open Source maintainer has failed to mature from a hobby into a proper profession.
Now Hiring: Senior Open Source Maintainer
A rare opportunity to make a real impact in a fast-paced, high-visibility role.
Sustainable Open Source: The Maintainers Perspective or: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Open Source
Open Source Resistance
A direct-action manifesto for maintainers keeping open source alive on company time.
The Missing Middle of Open Source
Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open S…
An inside look at modern open source software developer…
The struggles of an open source maintainer - <antirez>
Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing
This post is heavily inspired by my experience over the last ten years participating in the open source community and eight years as a maintainer of Homebrew (which I’ve maintained longer than anyone else at this point).
Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing
This post is heavily inspired by my experience over the last ten years participating in the open source community and eight years as a maintainer of Homebrew (which I’ve maintained longer than anyone else at this point).
Paying people to work on open source is good actually - Jacob Kaplan-Moss
If you have a problem with maintainers getting paid then you have a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate.
Aaron Boodman on Twitter / X
There is this tension in dev tooling right now: Lots of people want to self-host, and not depend on a service. Lots of people also want the vibes of open source - being part of an open development community, having the code, etc.But builders still need to make a living...— Aaron Boodman (@aboodman) January 23, 2024
Sustain
Sustain brings together practitioners, sustainers, funders, researchers and maintainers of the open source ecosystem. We have conversations about the health and sustainability of the open source community. We learn about the ins and outs of what ‘open source’ entails in the real world. Open source means so much more than a license; we're interested in talking about how to make sure that the culture of open source continues, grows, and ultimately, sustains itself. Newsletter
A plan for open source software maintainers
It seems to me that this is a case where problems are in fact solutions to other problems. To wit: