I am out of ideas on this one.

The problem here is "open source" is seen as free support and working for "the community" for free and since the code is out there, no-one needs to pay the maintainers. (which is false)

Some mention GitHub sponsors as the solution, however it is a power-law system and benefits the very early participants or already famous developers to make a meaningful amount of income. But it is now at its late stage for everyone else. In some cases, some maintainers on sponsors get attacked / cancelled over a disagreement and that is the end.

It is completely thankless and unsustainable. $5 donations do not work either.

Now with AI, unless you are at a company that can afford it, there is little reason for human developer(s) to be working in open source and relying on $5 "sponsors" since AI agents are used to replace the need of paying for support for the developer.

What worked 20 years ago for paying for human support, now does not work today unless you do not mind about willing to work for free and spend some tokens. If you don't someone else will with an agent.

Not even Richard Stallman or the FSF makes money on this, nor do they have a solution in 2026 as it is unenforceable. But one thing that Stallman, Torvalds and other famous developers have is influence and that is what pays their bills.

The article recalls people that open-source software is not necessary created for the community, but rather by the author, for the author oftentimes.

The "support" is not only the maintenance burden which (sometimes) could be solved for money. It's also the features that the original author just don't find useful at all, but others may want to have.

If I don't have Mac, never used it and don't plan to buy it, why would I want to accept contribution to support this platform? It's useless for me, I won't be able to test it (and it will break sooner or later), and once the code is accepted, it's usually assumed that it would be maintained by the application author, not the code contributor (unless additional CLA is signed, etc).

> The problem here is "open source" is seen as free support and working for "the community" for free and since the code is out there, no-one needs to pay the maintainers. (which is false)

I don't think this is true at all. FLOSS just means you are free to download a project, use it, and distribute it. There is absolutely no promise or expectation from the public of maintenance, nor is there absolutely no promise or expectation of monetary compensation from contributors.

The sole promise is "here's the code, have fun".

Heck, there isn't even any expectation that end-users contribute anything back to the project.

If you are a developer and have an expectation of receiving any monetary compensation, you should rethink your licenses. If you are an end-user and have any expectation of receiving maintenance work then you should reach out to whoever you seek to handle said maintenance and sort out business arrangements. In fact, that's exactly how it works. See for example how corporations pay maintainers to contribute and be involved in FLOSS projects. For extreme cases, see how a group of companies were quick to fork Redis to Valkey the moment that Redis tried to strong-arm it's way out of a FLOSS project. They had no problem amassing a set of maintainers in their payroll to take care of the code.

I'm perplexed by this expectation of FLOSS guaranteeing salaries to random maintainers who stick around and don't want to deal with the public. There are a few nasty stereotypes emerging from that assumption. Perhaps those nurturing these expectations should check the actual licenses to verify exactly what they cover and ensure.