Tidelift Report Reveals Insights on Open Source Maintainers
Tidelift, a company specializing in support and open source projects, recently published a report titled “2024 State of the Open Source Maintainer”. The report is based on a survey of 437 open source projects and sheds light on various issues and trends in the industry.
According to the findings, only 12% of respondents rely on Open Source projects as their primary source of income. While 60% of maintainers work on these projects as a hobby, 44% express a desire for financial compensation for their contributions. This percentage has remained relatively stable compared to previous years.
Those who receive payment for their work dedicate significantly more time to project development. Among ‘professional’ maintainers receiving compensation, 82% spend more than 20 hours a week on their projects, whereas only 8% of unpaid contributors can afford such a time commitment.
‘Professional’ maintainers noted that the funding they receive allows them to work on new features (64%), address bugs and security issues (52%), and attract other maintainers (26%) to the projects.
One notable change over the past three years has been the increased focus on security issues. While in 2021, only 4% of time was allocated to security, this figure has now risen to 11%. Paid maintainers spend even more time on security, with 13% of their time dedicated to this aspect compared to 10% for unpaid contributors.
The report also highlights that 60% of maintainers have considered leaving their projects, with 22% having already done so. Reasons for dissatisfaction include inadequate or lack of payment (50%), feeling undervalued (48%), increased stress (43%), and inflated user expectations (39%).
Furthermore, there has been a notable shift in the age demographics of maintainers. The percentage of maintainers aged 46-55 or 56-65 has doubled in the past three years, while the number of maintainers under 26 has decreased from 25% in 2021 to 10% currently. Interestingly, 45% of respondents have been involved in open source projects for over a decade.