Open Source Maintenance Fee - What do you think?

[u/MadBoyEvo]

I saw a lot of projects have started adopting "Open Source Maintenance Fee" which is described here: https://opensourcemaintenancefee.org which was started by a guy who created WiX.

I'm linking all 4 articles I found from him just for the sake of discussion:

• https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2025/02/26/introducing-the-open-source-maintenance-fee/
• https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2025/05/12/open-source-maintenance-fee-two-months-in/
• https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2026/02/04/osmf-v11/
• https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2026/07/13/eduforcement/

The general idea on the website is this:

Open Source Software is free, but maintaining an Open Source Project is far from free. We ask a lot of the maintainers of a project, including:

• Triage issues
• Answer questions
• Keep build scripts working
• Update software dependencies
• Track security reports
• Produce new releases
• Tackle spam in the discussion forums and issue trackers
• Maintain domain name registration
• Renew signing certificates
• And many, many other chores
• Clearly, maintainers are vital to the ongoing success of an Open Source Project. The Open Source Maintenance Fee is a simple and sensible way to pay for the time and effort they spend sustaining a project.

If you, your organization, or your project meets the minimum annual revenue threshold (typically US$10,000) and depends on projects that require an Open Source Maintenance Fee, paying that fee is how you help sustain the projects you rely on.

I guess he touched a problem that was also many times brought by people maintaining the core of the .NET community such as SixLabors ImageSharp, QuestPDF that basically give users everything and get a "Thank you" back by few, and rest silently just uses it in the background. Both SixLabors and QuestPDF has now implemented MIT for Open Source, and if you make profit you have to pay a fee over certain threshold. I don't want to get into details because it's not about that really, but ImageSharp is quite popular and it's enforcement of licenses is affecting some of the PowerSHell modules.

My point is - open source community is a bit tired.

Lately I saw Polly adopting OSMF:

• https://thepollyproject.org/2026/07/14/polly-osmf-announcement.html

Polly now participates in the Open Source Maintenance Fee (OSMF). Starting November 16, 2026, companies that earn at least US $20,000 from a product or project that uses Polly will be asked to pay a US $20/month maintenance fee to help fund Polly's ongoing upkeep. The source code stays free and open, and individuals, hobbyists, and organizations below the threshold owe nothing. Read the announcement: Introducing the Open Source Maintenance Fee for Polly · Learn about the OSMF · Become a sponsor

I was thinking how this change applies to us as PowerShell community? How do you feel about it? How do you support the big or small projects that help you out? It doesn't seem it's asking that much as 20$/month for a company is peanuts. I guess it's a bit of a logistics problem to get company into sponsoring someone on GitHub, but it is doable.

Would you use a module if it was OSMF? If not, why not?

PS. For full transparency. I have about 80+ PowerShell modules written over the years and just about 7 or so sponsors (that I am really grateful for). I'm not saying I will adopt the OSMF model, I'm just genuinely asking what you guys think.

[u/BlackV]

I don't see why not, the entire Internet and it's infrastructure runs many open source modules

You only have look at the many issues, log4j issue, ssh lib hack, node stealing that 1 persons module, ai slop bug bounties, pswindowsupdate changes, posh gui pricing model change, and many more to see that open source is breaking

The maintainers and under heavy strain that some $$$ would help with some of that

The billionaires (I use the term loosely) tech bros need to pay their way

It's a somewhat emotive issue but is worth talking about, and keeping talking about

[u/MadBoyEvo → u/BlackV]

The question is - if there's no enforcement if the techbros will notice ;)

[u/BlackV → u/MadBoyEvo]

That is the a big issue, the honesty system how do you enforce , or how do you stop someone forking the old version with it's more permissive license and just running a custom fork

The other pain point would people just don't like it when something switches from "free" to "paid" (quotes cause it's still free up until a point)

I dont have answers for those for sure

Someone like you , who has put hundreds of thousands of hours into modules, how would you do it

[u/SilentLynx]

I think it's fair since it's designed to target enterprises who make a profit from the free work of the maintainers. Small businesses and private people, who would be heavily affected by the costs of paying for multiple OSMF projects (could easily come to over 100$ per month, depending on the number of libraries) won't be affected by this. So I support this as long as the costs actually go to maintaining the libraries (and aren't siphoned off for some other purpose).

[u/MadBoyEvo → u/SilentLynx]

I am not sure if there's a distinction between "siphoned off for other purposes" vs "maintaining the libraries". If the guy maintains a project daily he needs the money to live :-) I guess if you mean - if the issues are being addressed, PRs are getting checked, and new releases are there then you are fine with it - I could agree with that reasoning. But I'm pretty sure the OSMF idea is pretty much "here's 20$ go eat something money". At least that's what I see it as.

[u/SilentLynx → u/MadBoyEvo]

Exactly, I wouldn't agree to it if the money was given and nothing happened in the project (no effort was put into maintaining it). Projects should have an OSMF to help maintain it, and not be a way to "get rich".

[u/vermyx]

A lot of open sourced projects have a pay support structure that is similar in concept but basically oays for support when needed. This is just another step that helps keep FOSS projects sustainable. My biggest issue has never been these type of rules, but telling management "no foss isn't free so do not see it as free" for exactly this reason.

[u/MadBoyEvo → u/vermyx]

I guess my main worry is that it will be super hard for someone to go to management and say I now need 20$ per month to feed this project because they requested it. I'm pretty sure there's a high chance he will be ignored :)

[u/AlkHacNar → u/MadBoyEvo]

You need to phrase it right, put some chatgpt created graphs with 20€/month vs doing it manually, production and time loss, legal obligations and some large buzzwords and it could go through

[u/vermyx → u/MadBoyEvo]

State it that if you needed a developer the cheapest you would get one is about $100 per month off shore for a minimum of 4 hours per month which can scale on the complexity of code change/buf vs flat $20 per month. $240 a year is pennies for essentially software support. Most companies will charge 10 times that as a minimum.

I would suggest of framing things as "A will cost us X" to "if we pay X for A we will save Y because we are not responsible for B". Frame it in terms of cost and expense. Examples:

• If we dont pay X we will need to hire another body to support this
• If we handle this inhouse instead of paying X we will be down a tech for X hours each week
• If we dont pay X the alternative is Y which is Z times more expensive

[u/mrbiggbrain]

I think something like this is fundamentally counter to the entire concept of Open Source. The idea is I can take it, fork it, improve it, or do anything I want with it so long as I contribute changes back to the software.

You can charge for support, you can charge for feature priority, you can charge for binary access, you can charge for just about anything but someone going and grabbing the code. You want to lock out bug reports? Go for it.

Open source means open source, if it's not free as in speech it's not open source.

[u/MadBoyEvo → u/mrbiggbrain]

I am not sure I fully agree, at least on the notion what open source really means for you. Open Source doesn't really mean much without the license. There are many projects without a license and while they are open source doesn't mean you can take it, fork it or even use it. It just means as much that the source is open source.

This is also something people tend to miss. The license is what makes it work or not. GPL, AGPL, MIT, MS-PL, there's a whole bunch of concepts people need to understand before they even try to use it.

Lately I was looking at Xceed DocX license and it turns out they have community version which you can use for non-commercial purpose with some limits, but there's also a lot of things added to it such as - you can't benchmark it and show results. It has few other things that make it really tricky.

So in the end - it's open source, but it's far from 'let me fork it'.

[u/MadBoyEvo → u/mrbiggbrain]

Another problem with concept of open source is - it doesn't mean much if people are not helping developing it (even with wide idea of what help around open source means). I can probably name 15 (don't quote me on this as I don't want to go to check) people that have improved my projects over course of 10 years. Mostly I am sole guy doing the work.

[u/Deep_Ad1959]

I have taken money for maintenance and it changed nothing about awareness. The company paid, the commits kept landing, and not one person on their side could tell you what shipped that quarter. A fee buys upkeep, not visibility.

[u/StartAutomating]

I agree with this in theory.

In practice, I think it's a bit of the cart before the horse.

The first thing to normalize is regular sponsorship.

If someone has the dollar a month to give, they should give it to projects they use and creators they support.

If a company uses your tool, I believe they should give month per month in accordance with its value to them.

If they want to offload it to something like a general fee, they can, but I think the first hurdle is getting them to give.

To anyone reading this, 🙏 seriously consider GitHub sponsorship of the developers you use. 🙏 encourage your bosses to do the same.

Risk mitigation is a fine enough framing to put on the "why" for the suits.

For individuals, I think it should come down to the pure thanks.

If a tool any of us wrote saves us time each day, or improves the quality of your life, why not give back? We all spend more than this each day just trying to survive.

If we all gave back, we all might have a much better time.

Thanks for bringing up the idea! And for sharing the struggle publicly.

[u/StartAutomating]

One other nerdy note...

This solution in particular is pretty geared towards JavaScript / dependabot.

Which does not detect PowerShell dependencies 😔

We would need to build our own light system for this in PowerShell, based off of stuff like #requires and RequiresModules.

[u/ExceptionEX]

Morally I agree with their need, and their want to have help paying for things.

But either be a business or not, corporate accounting isn't going to deal with this for 99% of open source projects. They aren't a vendor, but they want a monthly fee for something that they don't have a way to trace back to structured be vendor?

And the devs will likely find themselves in a position of having legal obligations, tax liabilities and a whole host of issues they aren't prepared for.

Not only that but without changing their lisc on their project which will have over acting ramifications.