Can we start measuring the conversion-rate from paid to unpaid contributor?
Sustainability is a systemic issue, and this is another symptom.
Things that made me happy this week!
- We have three AI Alignment metrics that folks are starting to work on.
- My most popular Mastodon post is about a watermelon and how to properly protect it (people are passionate); I also learned watermelons can explode on occasion!
- I planted my cucumber plants, lettuce and kale! The garden has started.
- FOSSY is in Vancouver this year! I'm just so happy to see a conference come this way. I submitted THREE talks, because why not (fingers crossed).
Recently I saw a post from someone in my network declaring what amounted to "open source bankruptcy" - not a maintainer, but someone central to community management who used to be paid for that work, at least in part, and hadn't been for a while. The loss of their time, perspective, and contributions is significant. More and more people face the same choice when funding (employment, grants, contracts) dries up: keep going for intrinsic reasons, or surrender to the pressures that come with it?
It's a different kind of burnout and risk than we usually talk about in open source: the people who started contributing in paid roles and can no longer do so in that capacity. Call it OSS conversion: paid contributor to volunteer. That should be a metric we track in this era of mass layoffs and shifting political priorities.
It's especially important when you consider the potential scope of paid-contribution on open source sustainability. In 2024, the Linux Foundation and GitHub highlighted in a report that the single biggest contribution to open source is not money, it's labor.
86% of investment is in the form of contribution labor by employees and contractors working for the funding organization, with the remaining 14% being direct financial contributions. - State of Open Source Funding