S1E2: Geomys – open source maintainers go pro
Maintainers of last resort and why it matters more than you think.
Read ‘til the end for some recommendations to further explore the impact of open source software.
What’s cool about this org?
Geomys is set up as an "organization of professional open source maintainers". They provide maintenance and support for critical packages in the Go programming language ecosystem.
How do they make money? A relevant question, given that most open source maintainers are not getting paid (or paid enough) for the software they publish and maintain. Geomys is backed by clients in retainer relationships.
Presumably, their clients have identified the need for specific software libraries, frameworks and packages that are critical to their businesses.
Given the importance of open source – which we dive into in the next section – this is an encouraging and optimistic model for financially sustaining key open source projects, and it appears to be working well.
Most recently, Geomys have started acting as a "maintainer of last resort" for security-related Go projects in need of new maintainers.
This is a promising model, and it will hopefully get replicated and expanded into the wider communities of open source projects beyond the Go language ecoysstem.
(Thanks to Simon Willison for putting Geomys on my radar)
Why is open source software so critical?
Quoting Nadia Eghbal’s report on the state of open source software:
Our modern society—everything from hospitals to stock markets to newspapers to social media—runs on software. But take a closer look, and you’ll find that the tools we use to build software are buckling under demand. Nearly all software today relies on free, public code (called “open source” code), written and maintained by communities of developers and other talent.
Much like roads or bridges, which anyone can walk or drive on, open source code can be used by anyone—from companies to individuals—to build software.
I get it, diving into this is getting into the weeds of Nerdom, and you’ve got bigger fish to fry.
But/and a lot of what we value in the world today would not exist without open source code being maintained by people who volunteer their time and talents to make code…and to share it with the public, making it available for everyone – and anyone – to use.
What’s the value of open source?
It has dramatically lowered the cost of creating software and launching companies (e.g., startups like Imgur began with almost no capital thanks to free libraries).
It has democratized access to learning: anyone can download a web development framework like Ruby on Rails for free, enabling self-taught programmers and diversifying who can participate in tech.
It gives developers mobility, bargaining power, and fosters innovation through rapid iteration and modification (forking).
However, the hidden labor required to maintain this infrastructure is undervalued and often invisible. The people, their labor and the open source code they publish and maintain form the “invisible” backbone on which nearly all modern software gets built.
What’s more: everyone uses and relies on it—from small startups to Fortune 500 firms to governments. Why? Because it is cheaper, easier, and more efficient than building proprietary software.
There are risks involved, of course, since there is no free lunch. When things breakdown (which happens more often than you think), they often do so spectacularly. The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, for example, revealed how fragile this reliance on open source software can be.
The open source thread
If you read the last post published here about Precious Plastic, open source is a common thread between this post and that one.
The economics of open source software are incredibly lopsided to the point that it feels like open source shouldn’t exist. Even a young Bill Gates could not fathom a world where open source became critical infrastructure:
Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
It turns out, a lot of people could back then, and have done so for many years to this day.
Which makes the “ ‘why' they do it?” question not as intriguing…why do any of us do anything?
What’s fascinating is that our world relies on them this much, and that, perhaps, this isn’t sustainable in the long run and we might want to rethink how this works. How it could work.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure open source maintainers don’t do it just out of the goodness of their heart. It’s some sort of effective altruism ploy. But our reliance on them is simply of too big a scale to ignore the pressures on them and the changing nature of software development and publishing, particularly in the AI-bubble we’re in.
Also, this should get us all thinking about the worlds that exist – an the orgs inhabiting those worlds – within the spectrum of “tooth and claw” capitalism on one end, and utopian socialism on the other.
Because, at the very least, there are entire sections of our global economy that rely on the gifts, talents and volunteered time of a few hundred human beings writing, and sharing, code.
A few recommendations
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, by Nadia Eghbal
Roads and Bridges Report, also authored by Nadia Eghbal and published by the Ford Foundation
The Mozilla foundation on open source and AI: For the sake of our digital future, open source must win.