Open Source Software is free, but Open Source Project maintenance is expensive. The Open Source Maintenance Fee directly funds your projects' maintainers. Simple. Sensible. Sustainable. opensourcemaintenancefee.org?utm_source=B... - ThreadSky

robmensching.com • 18 hours ago

Open Source Software is free, but Open Source Project maintenance is expensive.

The Open Source Maintenance Fee directly funds your projects' maintainers.

Simple. Sensible. Sustainable.
https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/?utm_source=BlueSky&utm_medium=Display&utm_campaign=osmf&utm_term=launch

Comments

davidanson.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Rob, super interesting stuff, thank you for doing this!

Some quick thoughts from a maintainer:

When your site says “JS”, it means “Node.js”. Nitpick, sorry, but relevant for non-Node folks…

In the Node ecosystem, the following command exists and seems relevant: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v11/commands/npm-fund

1/

robmensching.com•7 hours ago

Okay, I don't know what JS calls their ecosystem any longer. bun, deno and Node.js all use "package.json". I suppose I could call it "npm" as that's a better analog to NuGet.

davidanson.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Agree!

davidanson.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Enforcement is unclear. For projects that already enable GitHub sponsors, what drives the change to suddenly inspire everybody donate?

The documentation suggests replacing the current license (MIT) with your EULA file, but I’m not sure that’s semantically correct or will be recognized by tooling.

robmensching.com•7 hours ago

The key part is it is not a donation. The EULA requires payment, and GitHub Sponsors is the payment processor (yes, it's a little cheeky using Sponsors).

I know there is UI in VS that prompts to accept EULAs. I don't know what npm offers. It is entirely possible the tooling will need to improve.

davidanson.bsky.social•9 hours ago

The transitive-ness is unclear to me. If I have a wildly popular package that trivially wraps another and I’m the only user of that, I get all the maintenance fees and they get only $10/month?

robmensching.com•7 hours ago

Correct. If consumers decide a trivial wrapper is valuable, it will get most of the fees. However, if the wrapper is trivial, the dependent package could absorb the features and render it irrelevant.

However, these are hypotheticals. I'd like to see it actually happen to ground a solution.

davidanson.bsky.social•7 hours ago

It doesn’t have to be as extreme as my examples to be imbalanced. As an alternative, consider what “npm fund“ does: as a project owner, I get a listing of all transitive dependencies looking for funding. I end up paying exactly the set of projects I’m benefiting from and not just the top level ones.

robmensching.com•6 hours ago

Systems exist today to support that model (like https://thanks.dev). They are more complex because they (IMHO) expose relationships that don't exist in the real world.

The Maintenance Fee can have weaknesses in systems with deep dependency chains, but not necessarily.

davidanson.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Conversely, if I have an unpopular package that uses 100 popular packages, I have to run a massive deficit every month while they cash in? Neither seems equitable.

robmensching.com•7 hours ago

If you have an unpopular project, it isn't going to take a lot in fees. Make a better project. Use fewer dependencies.

That said, more detail may needed for edge cases, like what the expectations are when you don't take in enough fees to pay your dependencies. I look forward to those problems. :)

davidanson.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Unpopular doesn’t mean bad, though. Perhaps by design, this approach risks discouraging or preventing the creation of niche packages for a small community. Some of the joys of OSS may disappear once people are forced to focus on money.

But maybe that’s the only solution to the problem at hand…

davidanson.bsky.social•9 hours ago

No easy answers here, but thought it might be useful to share with you. I hope this is helpful and doesn’t just seem like complaining.

Thanks again for all that you do!

robmensching.com•7 hours ago

I don't think the answers are that complex. The Maintenance Fee is a small system with a tight feedback loop. That helps keep the complexity down.

With $ involved, people try to game the system. Fortunately, reputation plays a big part in consumer choices, and reputation is harder to fake.

rszasz.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Not to be rude but, who are you? License agreement changes aren't a small thing and it would be nice to know what working groups or law firms went over this?

robmensching.com•2 hours ago

Are you talking about the draft example EULAs? Those are draft and examples. I do hope to replace the draft versions with versions reviewed by my company lawyer as examples that should be legally sound, but you could always replace them with your own.

verdverm.com•4 hours ago

How do you envision forks working in this scheme?

robmensching.com•2 hours ago

Forks are a new Project around the same Software. So, they can must follow the LICENSE terms for the source code and can structure the rest of their project as they wish.

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