INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Open source sustainability has been nothing short of an oxymoron
Engineers around the world pour their sweat and frankly, their hearts into these passion projects that undergird all software in the modern
In exchange, they ask for nothing in return except for recognition and help in keeping their projects alive and improving them
It’s an incredible movement of decentralized voluntarism and represents humanity at its best.The internet and computing giants — the
heaviest users of open source in the world — are collectively worth trillions of dollars, but you would be remiss in thinking that their
wealth has somehow trickled down to the maintainers of the open source projects that power them
Working day jobs, maintainers today can struggle to find the time to fix critical bugs, all the while facing incessant demands from users
requesting free support on GitHub
Maintainer burnout is a monstrous challenge.That distressing situation was chronicled almost exactly two years ago by Nadia Eghbal, in a
landmark report on the state of open source published by the Ford Foundation
Comparing open source infrastructure to “roads and bridges,” Eghbal provided not just a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing
open source, but also a call-to-arms for more users of open source to care about its economics, and ultimately, how these critical projects
can sustain themselves indefinitely.Two years later, a new crop of entrepreneurs, open source maintainers, and organizations have taken
Eghbal up on that challenge, developing solutions that maintain the volunteer spirit at the heart of open source while inventing new
economic models to make the work sustainable
All are early, and their long-term effects on the output and quality of open source are unknown
But each solution offers an avenue that could radically change the way we think of a career in open source in the future.Eghbal’s report
two years ago summarized the vast issues facing open source maintainers, challenges that have remained essentially unchanged in the interim
It’s a quintessential example of the “tragedy of the commons.” As Eghbal wrote at the time, “Fundamentally, digital infrastructure
Resources are offered for free, and everybody (whether individual developer or large software company) uses them, so nobody is incentivized
to contribute back, figuring that somebody else will step in.” That has led to a brittle ecosystem, just as open source software reached
the zenith of its influence.The challenges, though, go deeper
It’s not just that people are free riding, it’s often that they don’t even realize it
Software engineers can easily forget just how much craftsmanship has gone into the open source code that powers the most basic of
npm, the company that powers the module repository for the Node ecosystem, has nearly 700,000 projects listed on its registry
Starting a new React app recently, NPM installed 1105 libraries with my initial project in just a handful of seconds
What are all of these projectsAnd more importantly, who are all the people behind them That dependency tree of libraries abstracts all the
people whose work has made those libraries available and functional in the first place
That black box can make it difficult to see that there are far fewer maintainers working behind the scenes at each of these open source
projects than what one might expect, and that those maintainers may be struggling to work on those libraries due to lack of funding.Eghbal
pointed to OpenSSL as an example, a library that powers a majority of encrypted communications on the web
Following the release of the Heartbleed security bug, people were surprised to learn that the OpenSSL project was the work of a very small
team of individuals, with only one of them working on it full-time (and at a very limited salary compared to industry norms).Such a
Open source projects often have many contributors, but only a handful of individuals are truly driving a particular project forward
Lose that singular force either to burnout or distraction, and a project can be adrift quickly.No one wants open source to disappear, or for
Yet, there is a strong cultural force against commercial interests in the community
Money is corrupting, and dampens the voluntary spirit of open source efforts
More pragmatically, there are vast logistical challenges with managing money on globally distributed volunteer teams that can make paying
for work logistically challenging.Unsurprisingly, the vanguard of open source sustainability sees things very differently
Kyle Mitchell, a lawyer by trade and founder of License Zero, says that there is an assumption that “Open source will continue to fall
from the sky like manna from heaven and that the people behind it can be abstracted away.” He concludes: “It is just really
wrong.”That view was echoed by Henry Zhu, who is the maintainer of the popular JavaScript compiler Babel
“We trust startups with millions of VC money and encourage a culture of ‘failing fast,’ yet somehow the idea of giving to volunteers
who may have showed years of dedication is undesirable” he said.Xavier Damman, the founder president of Open Collective, says that “In
every community, there are always going to be extremists
I hear them and understand them, and in an ideal world, we all have universal basic income, and I would agree with them.” Yet, the world
hasn’t moved to such an income model, and so supporting the work of open source has to be an option
“Not everyone has to raise money for the open source community, but the people who want to, should be able to and we want to work with
them,” he said.Mitchell believes that one of the most important challenges is just getting comfortable talking about money
“Money feels dirty until it doesn’t,” he said
“I would like to see more money responsibility in the community.” One challenge he notes is that “learning to be a great maintainer
doesn’t teach you how to be a great open source contractor or consultant.” GitHub works great as a code repository service, but
ultimately doesn’t teach maintainers the economics of their work.Perhaps the greatest debate in sustaining open source is deciding who or
what to target: the individual contributors — who often move between multiple projects — or a particular library itself.Take Feross
Aboukhadijeh (who, full disclosure, was once my college roommate at Stanford almost a decade ago) has become a major force in the open
source world, particularly in the Node ecosystem
He served an elected term on the board of directors of the Node.js Foundation, and has published 125 repositories on GitHub, including
popular projects like WebTorrent (with 17,000 stars) and Standard (18,300 stars).Aboukhadijeh was looking for a way to spend more time on
open source, but didn’t want to be beholden to working on a single project or writing code at a private company that would never see the
So he turned to Patreon as a means of support.(Disclosure: CRV, my most immediate former employer, is the series A investor in Patreon
I have no active or passive financial interest in this specific company
As per my ethics statement, I do not write about CRV’s portfolio companies, but given that this essay focuses on open source, I made an
exception).Patreon is a crowdsourced subscription platform, perhaps best known for the creatives it hosts
These days though, it is also increasingly being used by notable open source contributors as a way to connect with fans and sustain their
Aboukhadijeh launched his page after seeing others doing it
“A bunch of people were starting up Patreons, which was kind of a meme in my JavaScript circles,” he said
His Patreon page today has 72 contributors providing him with $2,874 in funding per month ($34,488 annually).That may seem a bit paltry, but
he explained to me that he also supplements his Patreon with funding from organizations as diverse as Brave (an adblocking browser with a
utility token model) to PopChest (a decentralized video sharing platform)
That nets him a couple of more thousands of dollars per month.Aboukhadijeh said that Twitter played an outsized role in building out his
“Twitter is the most important on where the developers talk about stuff and where conversations happen…,” he said
“The people who have been successful on Patreon in the same cohort [as me] who tweet a lot did really well.”For those who hit it big,
the revenues can be outsized
Evan You, who created the popular JavaScript frontend library Vue.js, has reached $15,206 in monthly earnings ($182,472 a year) from 231
The number of patrons has grown consistently since starting his Patreon in March 2016 according to Graphtreon, although earnings have gone
up and down over time.Aboukhadijeh noted that one major benefit was that he had ownership over his own funds
“I am glad I did a Patreon because the money is mine,” he said.While Patreon is one direct approach for generating revenues from users,
another one is to offer dual licenses, one free and one commercial
That’s the model of License Zero, which Kyle Mitchell propsosed last year
He explained to me that “License Zero is the answer to a really simple question with no simple answers: how do we make open source
business models open to individuals”Mitchell is a rare breed: a lifelong coder who decided to go to law school
Growing up, he wanted to use software he found on the web, but “if it wasn’t free, I couldn’t download it as a kid,” he said
“That led me into some of the intellectual property issues that paved a dark road to the law.”License Zero is a permissive license based
on the two-clause BSD license, but adds terms requiring commercial users to pay for a commercial license after 90 days, allowing companies
to try a project before purchasing it
If other licenses aren’t available for purchase (say, because a maintainer is no longer involved), then the language is no longer
enforceable and the software is offered as fully open source
The idea is that other open source users can always use the software for free, but for-profit uses would require a payment.Mitchell believes
that this is the right approach for individuals looking to sustain their efforts in open source
“The most important thing is the time budget – a lot of open source companies or people who have an open source project get their money
The problem is that services are exclusive to a company, and take time away from making a project as good as it can be
“When moneymaking time is not time spent on open source, then it competes with open source,” he said.License Zero is certainly a
cultural leap away from the notion that open source should be free in cost to all users
Mitchell notes though that “companies pay for software all the time, and they sometimes pay even when they could get it for free.”
Companies care about proper licensing, and that becomes the leverage to gain revenue while still maintaining the openness and spirit of open
It also doesn’t force open source maintainers to take away critical functionality — say a management dashboard or scaling features —
to force a sale.Changing the license of existing projects can be challenging, so the model would probably best be used by new projects
Nonetheless, it offers a potential complement or substitute to Patreon and other subscription platforms for individual open source
contributors to find sustainable ways to engage in the community full-time while still putting a roof over their heads.Supporting
individuals makes a lot of sense, but often companies want to support the specific projects and ecosystems that underpin their software
Doing so can be next to impossible
There are complicated logistics required in order for companies to fund open source, such as actually having an organization to send money
to (and for many, to convince the IRS that the organization is actually a non-profit)
Tidelift and Open Collective are two different ways to open up those channels.Tidelift is the brainchild of four open-source fanatics led by
Fischer, who is CEO, is a former venture investor at General Catalyst and Greylock as well as a long-time executive at Red Hat
In his most recent work, Fischer invested in companies at the heart of open source ecosystems, such as Anaconda (which focuses on scientific
and statistical computing within Python), Julia Computing (focused on the Julia programming language), Ionic (a cross-platform mobile
development framework), and TypeSafe now Lightbend (which is behind the Scala programming language).Fischer and his team wanted to create a
platform that would allow open source ecosystems to sustain themselves
“We felt frustrated at some level that while open source has taken over a huge portion of software, a lot of the creators of open source
have not been able to capture a lot of the value they are creating,” he explained.Tidelift is designed to offer assurances “around areas
like security, licensing, and maintenance of software,” Fischer explained
The idea has its genesis in Red Hat, which commercialized Linux
The idea is that companies are willing to pay for open source when they can receive guarantees around issues like critical vulnerabilities
In addition, Tidelift handles the mundane tasks of setting up open source for commercialization such as handling licensing issues.Fischer
sees a mutualism between companies buying Tidelift and the projects the startup works with
“We are trying to make open source better for everyone involved, and that includes both the creators and users of open source,” he said
“What we focus on is getting these issues resolved in the upstream open source project.” Companies are buying assurances, but not
exclusivity, so if a vulnerability is detected for instance, it will be fixed for everyone.Tidelift initially launched in the JavaScript
ecosystem around React, Angular, and Vue.js, but will expand to more communities over time
The company has raised $15 million in venture capital from General Catalyst and Foundry Group, plus former Red Hat chairman and CEO Matthew
Szulik.Fischer hopes that the company can change the economics for open source contributors
He wants the community to move from a model of “get by and survive” with a “subsistence level of earnings” and instead, help
maintainers of great software “win big and be financially rewarded for that in a significant way.”Where Tidelift is focused on
commercialization and software guarantees, Open Collective wants to open source the monetization of open source itself.Open Collective is a
platform that provides tools to “collectives” to receive money while also offering mechanisms to allow the members of those collectives
to spend their money in a democratic and transparent way.Take, for instance, the open collective sponsoring Babel
Babel today receives an annual budget of $113,061 from contributors
Even more interesting though is that anyone can view how the collective spends its money
Babel currently has $28,976.82 in its account, and every expense is listed
For instance, core maintainer Henry Zhu, who we met earlier in this essay, expensed $427.18 on June 2nd for two weeks worth of Lyft rides in
SF and Seattle.Xavier Damman, founder president of Open Collective, believes that this radical transparency could reshape how the economics
of open source are considered by its participants
Damman likens Open Collective to the “View Source” feature of a web browser that allows users to read a website’s code
“Our goal as a platform is to be as transparent as possible,” he said.Damman was formerly the founder of Storify
Back then, he built an open source project designed to help journalists accept anonymous tips, which received a grant
The problem was that “I got a grant, and I didn’t know what to do with the money.” He thought of giving it to some other open source
projects, but “technically, it was just impossible.” Without legal entities or paperwork, the money just wasn’t fungible.Open
Collective is designed to solve those problems
Open Collective itself is both a Delaware C-corp and a 501(c)6 non-profit, and it technically receives all money destined for any of the
collectives hosted on its platform as their fiscal sponsor
That allows the organization to send out invoices to companies, providing them with the documentation they need in order to write a check
“As long as they have an invoice, they are covered,” Damman explained.Once a project has money, it is up to the maintainers of that
community to decide how to spend it
“It is up to each community to define their own rules,” Damman said
He notes that open source contributors can often spend the money on the kind of uninteresting work that doesn’t normally get done, which
Damman analogized as “pay people to keep the place clean.” No one wants to clean a public park, but if no one does it, then no one will
He also noted that in-person meetings are a popular usage of revenues.Open Collective was launched in late 2015, and since then has become
home to 647 open source projects
So far, Webpack, the popular JavaScript build tool, has generated the most revenue, currently sitting at $317,188 a year
One major objective of the organization is to encourage more for-profit companies to commit dollars to open source
Open Collective places the logos of major donors on each collective page, giving them visible credit for their commitment to open
source.Damman’s ultimate dream is to change the notion of ownership itself
We can move from “Competition to collaboration, but also ownership to commons,” he envisioned.It’s unfortunately very early days for
open source sustainability
While Patreon, License Zero, Tidelift, and Open Collective are different approaches to providing the infrastructure for sustainability,
ultimately someone has to pay to make all that infrastructure useful
There are only a handful of Patreons that could substitute for an engineer’s day job, and only two collectives by my count on Open
Collective that could support even a single maintainer full time
License Zero and Tidelift are too new to know how they will perform yet.Ultimately though, we need to change the culture toward
Henry Zhu of Babel commented, “The culture of our community should be one that gives back and supports community projects with all that
they can: whether with employee time or funding
Instead of just embracing the consumption of open source and ignoring the cost, we should take responsibility for it’s
sustainability.”In some ways, we are merely back to the original free rider problem in the tragedy of the commons — someone, somewhere
has to pay, but all get to share in the benefits.The change though can happen through all of us who work on code — every software engineer
If you work at a for-profit company, take the lead in finding a way to support the code that allows you to do your job so efficiently
The decentralization and volunteer spirit of the open source community needs exactly the same kind of decentralized spirit in every
Sustainability is each of our jobs, every day
If we all do our part, we can help to sustain one of the great intellectual movements humanity has ever created, and end the oxymoron of
open source sustainability forever.
