In the OpenSource Supply Chain discourse in the past few years, we got many versions of the same article. The title is usually something like “unpaid maintainer of library X demand Big Company to shut up or pay them money”. There are variations on that theme, like Github Sponsors launching, pieces that explains how the CRA will magically make companies pay maintainers, etc. It is usually cheered on by the peanuts gallery, which applaud making the Evil Big Tech pays for the abuse they impose over their “exploitation of the Commons”.

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Open source maintainers face an "economic gravity well" that makes transitioning from hobbyist to paid work nearly impossible. The required income (~$5k/month) is unrealistic through donations, while grants are too short-term (6-12 months) to justify leaving stable employment. Finding new software jobs takes 6-12 months of full-time effort, making temporary funding programs impractical. Part-time software jobs essentially don't exist, and freelancing requires significant non-coding overhead. The time investment needed to secure feature-implementation grants is prohibitive for already time-constrained maintainers. Escaping this situation would require multi-year programs with substantial funding and no recipient obligations—a rare exception in philanthropy.

The Hobbyist Maintainer Economic Gravity Well

Aside: The Paid Feature Implementation Trap