In late 2022, Tidelift fielded its second survey of open source maintainers. Hundreds of maintainers responded with thoughts about getting paid for their work, the security and maintenance practices they have in place for their projects, and where they need help most, along with a host of other interesting insights.
In the first of eleven insights of this year’s survey, we asked maintainers to describe how they define their role as an open source maintainer, their sources of income, and the lifestyle difference between professional and semi-professional maintainers.
One of the most talked-about topics in open source today is the increasing demands on open source maintainers to do additional work to make their projects more secure—and how and if they should be compensated for it. Countering the regularly cited theory that most maintainers prefer to work on open source as an unpaid hobby, our survey found that 77% of the maintainers who are not paid would prefer to get paid. Only 23% would like to keep open source as an unpaid hobby.
To read more insights from our first finding, visit our blog, and to read maintainer responses to all eleven insights, you can download the full survey report right now.
Want the TL;DR? We’re hosting a live webinar on Thursday, May 18 at 3 p.m. ET when Tidelift’s resident data nerd Chris Grams shares the most interesting bits. RSVP here.
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