Research: of the 58 most popular open source projects on funding platform Open Collective, 80%+ receive income below industry standards or the poverty threshold
Most people believe that open source sustainability is a difficult problem to solve. As an open source developer myself … Tweets: @ablwr , @fransbouma , @piamancini , @maintainerati , @josh412 , @fakebaldur , and @marypcbuk Tweets: @ablwr : “Full-time maintainers are technically talented people responsible for issue management, security, navigating toxic complaints, while often receiving below the industry standards.” v. into this analysis on FLOSS funding, “Software below the poverty line” https://staltz.com/... Frans Bouma / @fransbouma : Proven again: “Open source is only free (as in beer) if your time is worthless” https://staltz.com/... If your company uses OSS that's not sponsored by $BIGCORP, make sure the maintainers are able to make a living. Pia Mancini / @piamancini : BOOM: “The struggle of open source sustainability is the millennium-old struggle of humanity to free itself from slavery, colonization, and exploitation.” @andrestaltz in https://staltz.com/... @maintainerati : From @andrestaltz: The donation model is broken: Over half of funded open source projects cannot sustain their maintainers above the poverty line. It's even worse for “invisible infrastructure” projects. https://staltz.com/... https://twitter.com/... Josh Pollock / @josh412 : “the amount of money Microsoft paid to acquire GitHub - the company - is more than 3000x what the open source community is getting yearly” Software Below The Poverty Line via @andrestaltz https://staltz.com/... Baldur Bjarnason / @fakebaldur : “André Staltz - Software below the poverty line” Donations don't work well as an OSS revenue stream. https://staltz.com/... Mary Branscombe / @marypcbuk : open source certainly isn't free as in lunch; when donations don't cover a developer salary, projects will stay as side projects unless companies fund them by, say, employing the developer. tempting to compare what AWS makes from hosted OSS productshttps://t.co/1BfiQyXS8t