Introducing the Open Source Maintenance Fee

Note: this blog post assumes you watched the “Introduction to the Open Source Maintenance Fee” video above. The video introduces the fundamental concepts. This blog post, will cover questions that are more personal and did not belong in a global “Hello, World” video. Let’s get started.

Why do this?

I touched on it in the video but I felt compelled to do something about the sustainability problems facing Open Source Maintainers. My personal frustration dealing with entitled consumers for the last few years—and watching other maintainers go through the same thing—hit a breaking point with the XZ Utils incident.

Two things happened in that incident. First, we saw a maintainer—who was vulnerable due to the lack of project sustainability—manipulated by attackers to sneak a backdoor into Linux… and then nothing changed. Second, in my viral tweet-thread everyone agreed that something should be done. I’ve never seen that many people on the internet agree about anything.

The cognitive dissonance that something should be done but nothing was done, fundamentally bothered me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the problem. It wasn’t until early July that the Maintenance Fee idea really started to come together.

Why did it take so long to share the idea?

In the second half of 2024, I shared the idea privately with several people in the Open Source community that I respect. I was looking for flaws, any reason why the Maintenance Fee was a bad idea.

The maintainers I spoke with all experienced a bit of an “aha” moment about halfway through my presentation. They then helped poke at the gaps in the initial proposal that I tried to address in the final draft. The non-maintainers I spoke with were interested but skeptical that a generic Maintenance Fee concept could work at scale.

However, even though I received generally positive feedback, I was (and still am) uncertain how the Maintenance Fee would be viewed publicly. Would it be ignored (the most likely scenario)? Or would I be personally derided for daring to suggest maintainers be paid? Or would many maintainers adopt it and, if so, could it materially improve the quality of their lives? Could we go as far as to normalize the idea of paying maintainers?

In the end, I believe the Maintenance Fee is a good idea. I’ve stated before that I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution to Open Source sustainability and I think the Maintenance Fee is a solid contribution to the sustainability conversation. If it inspires a even better solution, fantastic.

So I had to publish the idea.

But, work was also busy, so it took a few more months to finally get everything organized to publish the Open Source Maintenance Fee site. Today is the day we get to see what the reception will be.

What do you hope will happen?

My hope is that we normalize paying Open Source Maintainers so that we a) reduce their burn out/quit rates and b) encourage more developers to become maintainers.

I don’t care if we get there by maintainers requiring a Maintenance Fee. Or if consumers want (need?) the maintainers they depend on to keep working, so the consumers request to pay a Maintenance Fee even when one isn’t present yet.

Given history, I expect the maintainers will have the lead the way but I’d love to be surprised. You never know, maybe consumers will take my question at the end of the video above seriously.

Will a Maintenance Fee be introduced in the WiX Toolset?

Yes, for two reasons. First, I think the Maintenance Fee is a good idea. Second, it would be hypocritical if I didn’t add it to my own Open Source Project. In fact, I briefly introduced the Maintenance Fee in today’s WiX Online Meeting.

What’s next?

The next step for me is to monitor feedback and update https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org/ to address it. My goal is for that site to house all information about the Maintenance Fee.

If you’d like to chat about the Maintenance Fee, reach out on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, or Twitter) or fire off an email to “rob at robmensching.com”.

I’d love to know if you are considering requring Open Source Maintenance Fee and why/why not.

In the mean time, keep coding. You know I am.