Stop asking nicely for open-source donations

Voluntary donations failed open source, so it's time to force enterprises to pay.

Former npm engineer Laurie Voss argues that open source has hit a structural trap: free projects always win market share, leaving corporations with the profits while maintainers burn out. Licensing tweaks don't work—Elastic, Terraform, and Redis all tried charging for code, only to lose ground to free forks like OpenSearch and Valkey. Yet Tidelift surveys show 60% of maintainers are still unpaid, and a Linux Foundation study found just 136 developers write over 80% of the code in the top 50 packages.

Why it matters: Replacing open-source software would cost companies $8.8 trillion, according to Harvard researchers. Relying on exhausted solo volunteers creates massive security risks, like the 2024 xz backdoor. Since license changes fail and tip jars yield pennies, the proposal argues maintainers must force payments at the package registry level.

Here's the gist: 5% of open-source developers produce 96% of the total value holding up modern software.

If big tech wants working code, the free ride has to end.