Open source projects are popular among engineers and tech companies, but funding them is a different story. Initial enthusiasm can sustain a project temporarily, but over time, maintainers may experience burnout or decide to abandon the project. Recently, I observed two innovative methods for generating revenue for open source projects heavily used in commercial settings.
Open Source Maintenance Fee: An Interesting Experiment
Wix Toolset is a set of tools for creating Windows installers. Like many open source projects, its financial sustainability is uncertain: who compensates the core maintainers for their work on the project? Regular updates are necessary to keep up with new Windows versions and address security and other issues, all managed by maintainers.
The team introduced the Open Source Maintenance Fee model. Here’s how it works:
- The code remains free under an open source license.
- Support is paid. To open issues, comment, or participate in pull requests, a fee is required.
- Binary releases require a fee. Pre-compiled binaries are paid, though they can be built from the source code.
Businesses using Wix Toolset for revenue-generating activities are encouraged to pay if they need support or binaries:
- $10/month for companies with up to 20 employees
- $40/month for companies with 20-100 employees
- $60/month for larger companies
This model seems effective: 64 sponsors currently support the project. The fees could range from $640 to thousands monthly, supporting core contributors. Rob Menshing, a maintainer, noted:
“The maintenance fee benefits those doing maintenance. Two of us keep the project running while contributors focus on interesting tasks, not the essential but mundane tasks.”
This structure alleviates the burden on maintainers, incentivizing commercial users to contribute financially.
The fee concept emerged from the XZ Utils supply chain attack incident. Rob shared in the backstory of the Open Source Maintenance Fee:
“After witnessing the unsustainability of Open Source Maintainers and the XZ Utils incident, where a vulnerable maintainer was manipulated to insert a backdoor into Linux, and following widespread agreement on the need for action, I felt compelled to address the issue. The cognitive dissonance between acknowledging the need and taking no steps to resolve it troubled me, leading to the Maintenance Fee idea.”
I agree! As an OSS maintainer, users often seem entitled, demanding much with little in return. Years ago, I experienced burnout maintaining the Windows Phone library AdRotator. Users profited from my library but demanded new features or issue resolutions. I eventually passed maintenance to a more enthusiastic contributor.
I had assumed open source meant offering the code openly, expecting users to manage their issues independently. I didn’t foresee the maintenance burden accompanying it—something I neither expected nor wanted.
GitHub’s popularity might lead more projects to adopt similar fees. GitHub, being the main platform for open source projects with its simple UI, allows easy issue tracking and pull request submissions. However, popular projects often deal with many low-quality issues and premature pull requests.
For highly commercially used open source projects, the maintenance fee could mitigate noise and generate revenue, covering the maintenance time. Wix Toolset, for instance, has 775 open issues and over 6,500 closed issues. Managing these issues is time-consuming