Open-source software, despite being shared critical infrastructure, is maintained by volunteers or by full-time company employees. Neither is a sustainable model, the former for obvious reasons, and the latter because available resources at a single company do not scale with the size and success of the project, leading whole teams to burnout and churn.
I am testing a new model: professional independent full-time maintainers, who bill companies as contractors, providing ongoing maintenance and access to their expertise and to the project’s decision-making process.
I envision open source maintainer as a first-class profession, with independent maintainers organized in personal practices or small and medium-sized firms, earning compensation comparable to what senior software engineers are paid. I want maintainers to be empowered to keep doing what they do best, and be available as a resource to the companies that fund them.
I believe the best way to precipitate this change is to prove the model myself, and I plan to build the missing tools (legal contracts, best practices, professional associations…) and grow the model by example and by employing others.
Open-source software, despite being shared critical infrastructure, is maintained by volunteers or by full-time company employees. Neither is a sustainable model, the former for obvious reasons, and the latter because available resources at a single company do not scale with the size and success of the project, leading whole teams to burnout and churn.
I am testing a new model: professional independent full-time maintainers, who bill companies as contractors, providing ongoing maintenance and access to their expertise and to the project’s decision-making process.
I envision open source maintainer as a first-class profession, with independent maintainers organized in personal practices or small and medium-sized firms, earning compensation comparable to what senior software engineers are paid. I want maintainers to be empowered to keep doing what they do best, and be available as a resource to the companies that fund them.
I believe the best way to precipitate this change is to prove the model myself, and I plan to build the missing tools (legal contracts, best practices, professional associations…) and grow the model by example and by employing others.