Thirty years of voluntary funding schemes haven't paid open source maintainers because asking doesn't scale. The real money already flows — to JFrog, Docker, Sonatype — at the registry layer. The fix: registries charge companies for supply (they already do), then route a slice automatically to the maintainers who make that supply worth having.
It’s time to rethink Open Source
Why developers give away valuable work for free — and what can be done to take that money back.
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.
Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch
New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.
Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.
Home - Open Source Collective
Open Source Collective is a non-profit fiscal host for open source projects. Get Transparent fundraising, money management, and legal representation
Money, Money, Money - Writing software, in a rich (wo)man's world by Russell Keith-Magee
Open Source Endowment — World's First Endowment Fund for OSS
The Open Source Endowment provides truly sustainable funding for critical open source software through a community-driven endowment model.
Fueling Open Source with Vibes & Money
Economists think Open Source is a business model. Devs know better, and fund it accordingly.
The Missing Middle of Open Source
Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.
Open Source Resistance
A direct-action manifesto for maintainers keeping open source alive on company time.
Katerina Marchán (@zkat@toot.cat)
Open source maintainers of major projects (hi) are not ready to accept and talk about how the cultural insistence on permissive licensing is just straight up labor exploitation taking advantage of our addiction to popularity (also hi). We’re doing this to ourselves too, you know.
Nominate OSS for Funding — Open Source Endowment
Nominate critical, underfunded open source projects for OSE grant funding through our open, community-developed model.
The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
The open source movement runs on the heroic efforts of not enough people doing too much work. They need help.
SF ads call out tech firms for not paying for open source
: Puts Chief Tightwad Officers on notice
We just launched the Open Source Endowment, the first endowment dedicated to supporting Open Source maintainers, with $693,000 raised already. The world depends on Open Source, but making our ecosystem sustainable is a complex task. I hope that, with community consultation, the Endowment can help 🙏
A VC and some big-name programmers are trying to solve open source's funding problem, permanently | TechCrunch
techcrunch.comPlease welcome @railway.com as the newest member of @opensourcepledge.com 🎉 They rely on OSS projects like @vite.dev, @tanstack.com, @drizzle.team and @tailwindcss.com, and they're doing their part to sustain the ecosystem, from which we all benefit. Read all about it:
Railway Runs Open Source, Now We're Funding It
blog.railway.com
