A few days ago, I came across another familiar message in the open source world: a widely used project announcing that it can no longer compensate its contributors.
This time it was Vuetify.
But honestly, it could have been almost any project.
This Is Not an Isolated Case
If you’ve been around open source long enough, you’ve seen this pattern repeat itself:
- A project becomes popular
- It gains thousands (or millions) of users
- Companies quietly depend on it
- Maintainers keep it alive in their spare time
- Funding either stagnates… or disappears entirely
We’ve seen this with projects like FakerJS, and we’re seeing it again now. Not just with one ecosystem either—this spans frontend, backend, tooling, infrastructure… everything.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a structural problem.
The Myth of Optional Funding
There’s a common assumption in open source:
“If a project is valuable, people will fund it.”
In reality, that’s rarely how it plays out.
Funding is treated as optional:
- Optional for companies using the software
- Optional for individual users
- Optional for the ecosystem as a whole
But the work itself is not optional.
Maintainers still need to:
- Review pull requests
- Triage and respond to issues
- Fix bugs and security vulnerabilities
- Keep dependencies up to date
- Make releases and maintain stability
When funding is optional but the work is constant, the result is predictable: burnout, abandonment, or stagnation.
What I’m Seeing as a Maintainer
From my perspective working on FakerJS, I’ve started to rethink what “sustainability” actually means.
Relying purely on donations, sponsorships, or platforms like OpenCollective is fragile. It works for a small number of projects—but it doesn’t scale across the ecosystem.
So instead, I’m shifting my mindset.
1. Time > Money (Sometimes)
Rather than depending solely on financial contributions, I’m trying to secure time.
For example:
- Convincing my employer to allocate work hours to OSS
- Contributing during natural downtime at work
- Treating maintenance as part of my professional output
In this model, my “funding” becomes time that’s already paid for.
It’s not perfect, but it’s far more predictable than hoping for donations.
2. Community Contribution Is Undervalued
If money isn’t reliable, then community becomes critical.
And I don’t just mean code contributions.
We need more people to:
- Review pull requests
- Reproduce bugs
- Help triage issues
- Improve documentation
- Answer questions from other users
Maintainers shouldn’t be the bottleneck for everything.
A healthy project distributes responsibility.
3. Maintainers Are Not Support Teams
One subtle but important shift:
Open source maintainers are often treated like unpaid support engineers.
That expectation doesn’t scale.
If you rely on a project in production, there’s a responsibility to:
- Contribute back (code, time, or funding)
- Reduce noise (clear issues, reproducible examples)
- Respect maintainers’ time
Otherwise, the system collapses under its own weight.
Rethinking Sustainability
I don’t think there’s a single solution to OSS funding. But I do think we need to move away from the idea that donations alone will fix things.
A more realistic model probably looks like a combination of:
- Employer-supported contribution time
- Strong community involvement
- Selective sponsorships where they make sense
- Better expectations from users and companies
In other words: sustainability through participation, not just payments.
Why I’m Sharing This
I’m not writing this as an official statement from FakerJS.
This is just my personal perspective as a maintainer navigating the same challenges many others are facing right now.
Seeing projects repeatedly struggle with funding isn’t surprising anymore—but it should still concern us.
Because every time a project burns out, the entire ecosystem feels it.
A Small Ask
If you’re using open source (and you are), consider:
- Contributing in non-code ways
- Helping reduce maintainer workload
- Advocating for OSS time within your company
- Supporting projects you depend on—financially if possible, but not only that
Open source doesn’t survive on good intentions.
It survives on people showing up.
If you’re a maintainer feeling the same way, you’re definitely not alone.
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