Join the Open Source Pledge to pay the maintainers

Learn where this pledge fits in the funding landscape and how you can participate.

The open source sustainability crisis has been with us for so long that it can feel like a permanent state. But it doesn’t have to be. We can change the status quo, with enough willpower and coordinated effort. We can stop burning out maintainers. We can minimize the burnout-related security incidents that have become all too normal for us: XZ, Log4shell, Heartbleed.

On August 28, we launched the Open Source Pledge, a group of companies working together to change the status quo in open source sustainability. In this post, I want to put the Pledge in context, and invite you to help us make this movement a reality.

Where the Pledge fits in the open source funding landscape

There are basically three levers to pull in funding open source: (1) commercialization, (2) taxation, and (3) social validation.

Commercialization is the building of business models around a project, selling consulting, educational content, advertising, hosting, etc., to subsidize work on open source. This is well-trodden and time-honored, but not sufficient to cover all cases. Misaligned incentives lead to relicensing rug pulls, and important projects still fall through the cracks. We need more approaches.

Taxation is what new efforts such as Sovereign Tech Fund are tapping into. They are spending Germany’s money on open source, and it’s wonderful to watch. In under two years they’ve already had a tremendous impact, investing €20M+ in critical digital infrastructure. With their new fellowship program they are shifting from a strings-attached model based on service contracts, towards no-strings-attached approaches to paying the maintainers. I love to see it!

Social validation is the tack we’re taking with the Open Source Pledge, a group of companies working together to change the status quo in open source sustainability. Open source should be like a restaurant. Our companies feast at the table year after year. Are we going to pay for the value we consume? Right now there is no general expectation that we would. This is what we aim to change with the Pledge.

Read more: A how-to guide for paying open source maintainers

What is the Open Source Pledge?

The Open Source Pledge is a group of companies committed to paying maintainers in a public, meaningful way—$2,000 (US) per year per developer on staff. This is in addition to the code and gift-in-kind contributions that many of our companies also make.

Pledge is not directly involved in the flow of funds. Companies decide for themselves which projects to fund, and how to fund them. We want Pledge to be as light-weight as possible to push forward the whole ecosystem of maintainers, projects, foundations, fiscal hosts, and payment platforms that already exists. We will grow together with all of these stakeholders, especially as Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) legislation elevates the role of open source software stewards.

The Open Source Pledge launched on August 28, and three weeks in we already have a dozen companies on board. We are attracting the attention of founders and investors:

• “Every VC-funded company post series B should join the Pledge.” —Andreas Klinger
• “I can’t overstate how excited I am about this.” —Johannes Schickling
• “Great initiative. Much needed and vital for the next step of internet growth” —Raymmar Tirado

A major marketing campaign will kick off on October 8, with three prime-location billboards in San Francisco, beside buses and bus shelters. NASDAQ is congratulating Pledge partners on the NASDAQ Tower in Times Square. This is going to be big.

That said, Pledge is a marathon, not a sprint. Today the largest participant is my employer, Sentry, with about 150 developers. The other companies on board are in the 1-10-developer range. Over time we will work our way up the food chain and laterally.

If all goes well, Pledge membership will be the new status quo in five or ten years, as the diffusion of innovations plays out. We will welcome our first 1,000-dev company in due time, and then our first 10,000-dev company. Each will unlock many, many more smaller participants joining, and, eventually, their peers. This will happen both through direct networking and indirectly by public example: “If they can do it, why can’t we?” Our vision is that, in time, a company not participating in the Pledge will be a decision they have to defend when hiring or marketing to developers.

How you can participate today

Here are four ways you can contribute to bringing about this change in our industry together:

1. Have your company join the Pledge.
2. Help us with networking and warm introductions to potential member companies.
3. Use your platform as a maintainer or other stakeholder to promote the Pledge.
4. Ask your vendors and employers why they haven’t joined the Pledge yet—or thank them if they have!

My email address is chadwhitacre@sentry.io, you can also find me on LinkedIn, X, and Mastodon, or you can open an issue on GitHub or join our Discord.

Open source is not monolithic, and there’s no one single answer to open source sustainability. It will take a blend of all three fundamental approaches: commercialization, taxation, and social validation. To everyone tackling this problem from all angles: Keep up the good work! Together we can make maintainer burnout, and burnout-related security vulnerabilities such as XZ and Log4shell, a thing of the past.

More from We Love Open Source

• A how-to guide for paying open source maintainers
• Why open source matters in your project management tool
• How to start with design in your open source project