A list of resources to think about free software and open source current challenges. A work in progress. Contributions are welcome!
- Open Source & Feelings 2015 - What Part of “… for Life” Don’t You Understand? by Jacob Kaplan-Moss (2015)
- Avoiding Burnout, and other essentials of Open Source Self-Care by Kathleen Danielson (2015)
- The Hard Parts of Open Source by Evan Czaplicki (and citations) (2018)
- Linus Torvalds addressing maintainer fatigue (2024)
- Nolan Lawson of PouchDB on what it feels like to be a maintainer (sustainoss.org, Oct. 2024)
- Open source developer corrupts widely-used libraries, affecting tons of projects (theverge, Jan. 2022)
- actix-web post mortem (and the HN discussion and this blog)
- The struggles of an open source maintainer by http://antirez.com
- The Linux Mint Blog - Monthly News – March 2019 (and in betanews.com)
- Give Away Your Code, But Never Your Time by William Gross
- Why open source developers are burning out: No respect
- On Being a Free Software Maintainer by Georges Stavracas
- 5 rules for avoiding burnout by Jen Krieger
- GitHub is really good at visualizing burnout
- Automattic is doing open source dirty (October 2024)
- The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained (October 2024)
- I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainer (February 2023)
- Awesome Open Source Company (GitHub repository, started in May 2022)
- Why and how we raised VC funding for an open-source project (January 2022)
- Should I Open Source my Company? (March 2022)
- Enforcing the pyramid of Open Source (January 2022)
- How to build an Open Source Business in 2021 (Part 1) (November 2021)
- Open source has a funding problem (January 2021)
- Full-Time Open Source With Andrew Kelley (August 2021)
- “Should You Open Source Your Startup?” by Ben Awad (May 2021)
- The Luck of Open Source by Kyle E. Mitchell (May 2021)
- How to pay your rent with your open source project (June 2020)
- Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself (May, 2020)
- Death of an Open Source Business Model (Dec. 2020) (HN)
- Open source licensing and why we’re changing Plausible to the AGPL license (Oct., 2020) (HN)
- Xs:code launches subscription platform to monetize open-source projects (Dec. 2019)
- Balancing Makers and Takers to scale and sustain Open Source (Nov., 2019)
- Re-Licensing Sentry (Nov. 2019)
- Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses (May 2019)
- Defining “sustainable” for an open-source project (Mar. 2019)
- FOSDEM 2019 and the challenge to finance Open Source (2019)
- Sustaining FOSS projects by democratizing the sponsorship process by adamstac, (2019)
- Making money with licenses (Nadia Eghbal, March 2019)
- AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source (Ben Thompson, stratechery.com, January 2019)
- FLOSS business models (Sustainable Free and Open Source Community, 2018)
- Open Source Confronts Its Midlife Crisis (Bryan Cantrill, December 2018)
- An alternate ending to the tragedy of the commons (Nadia Eghbal, May 2018)
- A EULA in FOSS clothing? (Bryan Cantrill, December 2018)
- Building a Business on Open Source (www.linuxfoundation.org, July 2017)
- Open Source Business Models Redux (Stephen Walli, 2017)
- Building an Open Source Service (David Cramer, blog.sentry.io, October 2016)
- The Economics of Software (Bryan Cantrill, August 2004)
- The Simple Economics of Open Source (www.nber.org, Josh Lerner, Jean Tirole, 2000)
- Microsoft: ‘We Love Open Source’ (www.pcworld.com August 2010)
- Open-Source Software Is in Crisis, ieee.org, 2024
- The Open Source Sustainability Crisis, Chad Whitacre, 2024
- The Silent Crisis in Open Source: When Maintainers Walk Away, BekahHW, 2024
- Maintaining FOSS Projects Sucks, Vaxry, 2023
- Does open source need its own Priority of Constituencies?, Tobie Langel, 2021
- Scaling open source by creating potential, by David Nolen, Oct. 2020
- DigitalOcean’s Hacktoberfest is Hurting Open Source, by Domenic Denicola, Sept. 2020
- Open source can thrive in a recession says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert, Itw of Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal, May 2020
- How’s That Open Source Governance Working for You?, Nathan Schneider, Apr. 2020
- Open Source is Broken by Don Goodman-Wilson, Sept. 2019
- Don’t fund Software that doesn’t exist by Andreas Mueller, Jan. 2020
- Theory: average bus factor = 1 by anarcat, Nov. 2019
- The Internet Relies on People Working for Free by Owen Williams, Sept. 2019
- The Internet Was Built on the Free Labor of Open Source Developers. Is That Sustainable? by Daniel Oberhaus, 2019
- Defining “sustainable” for an open-source project by Jake Edge, Mar. 2019
- Let’s talk about open source sustainability by Devon Zuegel, 2019
- https://dieworkwear.com/post/182126040434/how-we-lost-our-ability-to-mend
- How to support open-source software and stay sane by Anna Nowogrodzki, 2019
- Load-Bearing Internet People by ESR, 2019
- Software below the poverty line by André Staltz, 2019
- Altruism Still Fuels the Web. Businesses Love to Exploit It by Zeynep Tufekci, 2019
- We need Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities by Adam Jacob, Dec. 2018
- Decentralized funding? An analysis of three programs by Nadia Eghbal, 2018
- $1m to pay open source maintainers on Tidelift by Donald Fischer, 2018
- Creating a New Source of Revenue for Open Source Software by Guillaume Luccisano, 2018
- Heart of Clojure 2019 - Daniel Compton - Building Stable Foundations
- The End of Gmane? by Lars Ingebrigtsen, Jul. 2016
- https://sustainoss.org
- http://themaintainers.org
- https://maintainerati.org
- https://www.outreachy.org
- https://www.legacycode.rocks
- https://prototypefund.de
- https://www.piratecare.net/posts/call-for-papers/
- fundthecode.org: events to finance FLOSS projects
- https://github.com/sponsors (and the FAQ)
- https://www.maintainersanonymous.com/
- https://nadiaeghbal.com/microgrants
- Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Project
- Help Sustain Open Source Communities by the Linux Foundation
- faiross.org
- oss.fund: Open Source Software Funding Platforms Registry (discussed on discourse.sustainoss.org)
- Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities
- No Maintenance Intended
- Russell and Vinsel, “Making Maintainers: Engineering Education and the Ethics of Care” preprint.
- Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal, 2016
- Exploiting Developer Infrastructure Is Ridiculously Easy by Jarrod Overson, 2018
- Every day, we rely on digital infrastructure built by volunteers. What happens when it fails?
- Indigenous wisdom as a model for software design and development, 2021
- “Open Source” Does Not Mean “Includes Free Support”, 2020
- Invasion of The Ethical Licenses, 2020
- Blood money is fine with us, says GitLab, 2019
- 6 myths about “ethical” open source licenses, 2019
- Why we need an Open Source Licence that considers the misuse of our code, 2019
- Major Open Source Project Revokes Access to Companies That Work with ICE by Daniel Oberhaus, 2018
- Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers
- Of Money, Responsibility, and Pride by Steve Marquess
- Why Software Projects need Heroes (Lessons Learned from 1100+ Projects)
- What Core Contributors Want by Alanna Irving, 2019
- Why don’t you accept donations? by Raymond Hill, 2015
- mastodon/mastodon#11129
- Software Community Growth through “first-timers-only” issues by gauravano with warren, 2019 (also see firsttimersonly.com)
- Finding your tribe - choosing open source communities
- The cult of the free must die by Peter-Paul Koch, August 2020 (HN)
- The Principal Developer by Eduards Sizovs, 2019 (HN)
- https://logicmag.io/failure/freedom-isnt-free/ by Wendy Liu, August 2018
- The culture war at the heart of open source and What comes after open source?, by Steve Klabnik, 2018
- The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming by Jessica Kerr, 2018
- ‘Human-Computer Insurrection’ (PDF)
- Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (The Penguin Press, 2009)
- https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/right-to-repair-and-the-dmca/
I collected some resources from a discussion that happened on the mailing list of the themaintainers.org project, Nov. 2017.
- Chris Jones. Routes of Power. Energy and Modern America, 2016 (link)
- Julie Cohn. The Grid, Biography of an American Technology, 2017 (link)
- Jo Guldi. Roads to Power, Britain Invents the Infrastructure State. 2012 (link)
- Chris Wells. Fueling the Boom: Gasoline Taxes, Invisibility, and the Growth of the American Highway Infrastructure, 1919-1956 from the 2012 JAH special issue on oil. (link)
- Christopher W. Wells. The Road to the Model T: Culture, Road Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the American Motor Age, Technology & Culture 48, no. 3 (July 2007), 497-523.
- L. Freed, Networks of (colonial) power: roads in French Central Africa after World War I, History & Technology September 2010.
- Christopher W. Wells. The Changing Nature of Country Roads: Farmers, Reformers, and the Shifting Uses of Rural Space, 1880 – 1905, Agricultural History 80, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 143-166.
- Fernando Dominguez Rubio, Preserving the unpreservable: docile and unruly objects at MoMA (link) [Comment: “puts questions of care and maintenance at the center of sociological/philosophical concerns about cultural categories, social order, and ontology.”]
- Irani, Lilly. Difference and Dependence among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk (link)
- Carse, Ashley. Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed, Social Studies of Science 42, no. 4 (2012): 539-563.
- Barnes, J. E. (2017). States of maintenance: Power, politics, and Egypts irrigation infrastructure. Environment and Planning, Society and Space, 35(1), 146-164.
- Edensor, T. (2011). Entangled agencies, material networks and repair in a building assemblage: The mutable stone of St Ann’s church, Manchester, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36 (2), 238-252.
- Gregson, N. (2011). Performativity, corporeality and the politics of ship disposal. Journal of Cultural Economy, 4(2), 137-156.
- Rosner, D. K., & Ames, M. (2014). Designing for repair?: Infrastructures and materialities of breakdown. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 319-331).
- Erik van der Vleuten et al., Europe’s System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity and Rail Networks, Contemporary European History 16, no. 3 (August 2007): 321–47, (link)
- Vincent Lagendijk and Frank Schipper, Electrifying Europe and Driving Europe.
- Tensions of Europe network (link).
- John May. Infrastructuralism: The Pathology of Negative Externalities [Comment: argues that infrastructure’s solution to problems is always done by transferring them elsewhere] (link)
- Paul Edwards. How fast can we transition to a low-carbon energy system, 2015. (link)
- Hillary Brown. Next Generation Infrastructures (link)
- Timothy LeCains. Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet [Comment: “connects the early construction of electric grids in the US to the rise of large-scale, open pit copper mining”] (link)
- Wallsten, Björn. The Urk World: Hibernating Infrastructures and the Quest for Urban Mining, 2015 (link)
- Peerfunding (p2pfoundation.net)
- The OSI celebrates maintainer month, OSI, June 2021
- (ninth RacketCon): Governing Rust, by Aaron Turon, 2021
- No more free work from Marak - Pay Me or Fork This #1046, Nov 2020
- Recap of the `funding` experiment by Feross Aboukhadijeh, 2019
- But You Said I Could by licensezero, 2019
- Open Source is Not Enough by James Halliday, May 2018
- Maintainer vs. Community, by Mikeal Rogers, 2017
- https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-doesnt-anyone-weep-for-docker/
- https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/episode-24-chat-about-redis-labs-podcast-transcript
- https://armin.dev/blog/2019/08/supporting-browser-extension-developers/ (and HN)
- https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/next-steps-for-the-working-group/23 (see ossgrants)
- https://twitter.com/pradyunsg/status/1146454278174756864
- https://twitter.com/ceejbot/status/1135125056487485440
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-bug-fixes-git.html
- https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroachdb/ (on HN and theinformation.com)
- https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer-projects/
- https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/GoIsGooglesLanguage
- Python request episode : on Twitter, vorpus.org and journal.kennethreitz.org
- https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/29/canonical-consolidates-open-infrastructure-support-and-security-offerings
- https://changelog.com/podcast/233 about Webpack
- https://www.legacycode.rocks/podcast-1/episode/1c0e0b87/hail-the-maintainers-with-andrew-russell
- https://aws.amazon.com/fr/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-open-open-distro-for-elasticsearch/
- https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/8xypb5/the-dwarf-fortress-creators-werent-in-it-for-money-but-now-they-need-it
- Stepping stone history of FOSS assumptions, ethics, personalities & economics
- A Seasonal Report on Developer Trends in the Cloud: Open Source Edition
- Strange Loop - A Stitch in Time - The future of OSS Sustainability September 12-14 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA
See this file.
