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Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm

Filippo Valsorda · 8 Jul 2024 · words.filippo.io ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Filippo Valsorda did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Companies are willing to pay for their critical open source dependencies; what is missing is a legible way for projects to sell it to them.

    Their wordsI started with a rather non-consensus hypothesis: companies want to pay for their critical open source dependencies, but most projects are not selling them a legible way to do so.
    Interesting

  2. Our reading

    Open source maintenance can be a mature profession organised into small specialist firms, the way law and medicine already are.

    Their wordsFrom the onset, I envisioned small firms of professional maintainers with thematic portfolios, accommodating diverse maintainers and project sizes, just like the specialized firms of other professionals.
    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.

    Their wordsClients still pay a fixed monthly retainer to ensure the professional maintenance of the whole portfolio, and to get access to the expertise of all of Geomys’ maintainers.
    Interesting