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.
Against a backdrop of increasing demands on open source maintainers from industry and government, we wanted to use this year’s survey to see how they are hanging in there. In the ninth of eleven insights of this year’s survey, we asked maintainers to tell us more about what kind of support might have kept them working on a project they’ve quit or considered quitting.
Of course it’s no surprise that the most popular way to keep maintainers from quitting was…pay them! Fifty-seven percent of maintainers who had quit or considered quitting reported that if they earned more income for their open source maintenance work, they would be more likely to continue it.
But that is not the only kind of support that might keep them going. Fifty-six percent of maintainers reported that they would appreciate help finding another experienced maintainer or maintainers to join the project and share responsibilities, and 40% would appreciate help finding another experienced maintainer to take over some of their project responsibilities so they can focus on the parts they enjoy the most.
To read more insights from our ninth headline, 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 hosted a live webinar where Tidelift’s resident data nerd Chris Grams shared the most interesting bits. Watch now.
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