The open source sustainability crisis keeps getting worse. The XZ Utils backdoor incident showed us what happens when maintainers burn out. Log4Shell

Can OSSPledge Fix Open Source Sustainability?

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2024-11-23 22:00:05

The open source sustainability crisis keeps getting worse. The XZ Utils backdoor incident showed us what happens when maintainers burn out. Log4Shell exposed how critical infrastructure runs on volunteer work.

The Open Source Pledge aims to address this by encouraging companies to pay $2,000 per developer per year to support the open source projects they depend on.

Let’s do some quick math. A company with 50 developers would pledge $100,000 yearly to open source projects. For many tech companies, that’s less than one senior engineer’s total compensation.

Early adopters like Sentry.io, Sanity, Laravel, and VoidZero have already joined the pledge. Credit where credit is due, see the full list of members here.

A massive portion of the software we all depend on is based on Open Source projects. Though these projects are very important, the people who tirelessly maintain them often do so without being paid at all.

If widely adopted, the OSSPledge could transform open source maintenance from volunteer work to sustainable careers. This could help retain and attract maintainers to critical projects.

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