Open-source sustainability won't be solved by donations alone. As highlighted in the article, donating is incredibly convenient nowadays, so when companies or individuals don't contribute, it's typically due to a lack of willingness.<p>To take on and compete with the proprietary model, one must generate comparable revenues and attract similar levels of investment. The solution to open-source sustainability is straightforward: people pay for what they genuinely need. Commercial open-source excels in this aspect!<p>However, as you may know, it comes with its challenges. When a company profits from an open-source program, decision-making authority about what to implement or exclude lies firmly with that company, diverging from the open-source ethos. Yet, the real issue isn't the existence of a business model and revenue, but rather the absence of community control.<p>This underscores the importance of addressing the root of the issue. To enhance open-source sustainability, we must identify what currently works best and tackle its associated problems. This means embracing a commercial open-source business model while ensuring that decisions about the software aren't solely in the hands of a select few developers or corporations. Instead, a democratic approach should be embraced, where the user community plays a significant role in shaping these processes. Community control guarantees that the software evolves in a way that aligns with the needs and values of its users.
I'd love to see a more agile open source funding model: something like a freelancer collective that can draw together developers and share the admin and funding tasks. I.e. a platform, but a bit smaller in context, perhaps just for the sake of local tax rules. Re. the source of these funds (hinted it will come in a future article,) it makes more sense to expect companies to share their revenue, than to hope for donations from consumers.<p>There's also the other type of sustainability that has been shrinking as VCs make open-source a buzzword: contributions. I've seen more and more projects launch to great fanfare, and some years later close contributions, and perhaps even the issue tracker, because they are a small team. This leads to fragmentation, which leads to higher maintenance costs for the community as a whole.<p>Sure, the source is available, so a contribution to society has been made, but by doing so, you also become the "town square" where people expect to go to contribute. Perhaps the problem here is that the public VCS repositories should not only have PRs, but a list of contributed 3P patches without the expectation they will be merged, but they can easily be auto-tested against trunk, and patch authors be notified of breakages.
<a href="https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/" rel="nofollow">https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/</a><p>I'm an 'outsider', but from from the outside the Material For MkDocs Project looks like a very well managed open source project.<p>Martin Donath's project uses a 'sponsorware' release strategy to generate donations.<p>From my vantage point it seems to be working pretty well.