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Discussion on: Open Source Sustainability

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Benjamin Nickolls

great post, some points and a prompt:

pay $X every month to "some arbitrator?", and then every library in your package.json with 75 dependencies recieves $X/75 every month.

100% this will not work, but I disagree with your 'libraries devs appreciate the most' idea. I think what we're already seeing is that a small number of libraries with more exposure are starting to attract even greater support. People tend to pick the winners.

We could go down the line and say that there might be an algorithm that takes into account the cyclomatic complexity, usage and a dampening factor for current level of support. I would love to get there, and I have tried and failed in the past.

More and more I am thinking in terms of sustainability as a community of projects, rather than treating each project in isolation. Given the current programmes we have some projects will 'win' and others will lose. But what if we use that fact that some projects have that exposure and are able to generate 'revenues' (whether in paid for services, support or donations) to create a a sustainable future for themselves and those that they depend on? At what point should OS projects begin to support other OS projects?