korrents

Filippo Valsorda

@filippo-valsorda · 12 positions · 0 changes of mind

Cryptographer, formerly of the Go team at Google, and since 2022 a full-time professional open source maintainer. He maintains the Go cryptography libraries, age and mkcert, and founded Geomys, a firm of professional maintainers funded by retainers from the companies that depend on their projects. Writes at words.filippo.io.

Filippo Valsorda did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  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.

    ↗Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firmwords.filippo.io 1st of 3 in this piece

    open source

    Interesting

  3. 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.

    ↗Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firmwords.filippo.io 2nd of 3 in this piece

    open source

    Interesting

  5. 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.

    ↗Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firmwords.filippo.io 3rd of 3 in this piece

    open source

    Interesting
  6. 17 months earlier

  7. Our reading

    Maintainers of widely used open source software are not adequately funded, and that is a real and unsolved problem.

    Their wordsThis experiment started from the observation that despite being critical for the functioning of the Internet—and, by extension, the economy—the role of open-source maintainer has not yet found a sustainable manifestation.

    ↗I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainerwords.filippo.io 1st of 5 in this piece

    open source

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    Foundations, on the whole, do not pay the maintainers of the projects they exist to support.

    Their wordsVirtually all maintainers are either volunteers or full-time employees of large companies. Foundations on average don’t pay maintainers.

    ↗I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainerwords.filippo.io 2nd of 5 in this piece

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    Volunteering cannot sustain critical software, because a volunteer’s life circumstances change and the project’s need does not.

    Their wordsVolunteerism is self-evidently not sustainable, as people’s life circumstances change.

    ↗I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainerwords.filippo.io 3rd of 5 in this piece

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    A dependency you would need engineer-months to replace or fork is a critical one, and retaining its maintainer is straightforward business sense.

    Their wordsThis is how I frame it: if the effort required to replace or fork a dependency should it go unmaintained is measured in engineer-months, that’s a critical dependency and retaining its maintainers probably makes good business sense.

    ↗I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainerwords.filippo.io 4th of 5 in this piece

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    Employing a maintainer inside a large company breaks down exactly when the project succeeds: the workload grows while its value to the employer stays flat.

    Their wordsAs a project gets more popular in the ecosystem, the workload increases but the value of that project for the company stays the same, so resources don’t increase accordingly.

    ↗I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainerwords.filippo.io 5th of 5 in this piece

    Interesting
  16. 11 months earlier

  17. Our reading

    A contribution is a cost to the maintainer, not a gift: it is taking part, not merely using the code, that consumes a project’s scarcest resource.

    Their wordsI often read advice along the lines of “if you want to help a project send PRs” and I never understood it. Reviewing and iterating or pushing back on PRs is work! Often more than writing the code itself.

    ↗How to pay professional maintainerswords.filippo.io 1st of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    A token monthly donation shows appreciation and achieves nothing else; sustaining a maintainer takes a real fraction of an engineering salary.

    Their words$1,000/month without benefits is a nice way to show appreciation, but won’t achieve any other goals.

    ↗How to pay professional maintainerswords.filippo.io 2nd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    Paying a maintainer must not buy a say in the project’s direction; funding and governance have to be kept as separate as possible.

    Their wordsGovernance is a delicate and complex topic, and you want to leave it as orthogonal as possible to funding.

    ↗How to pay professional maintainerswords.filippo.io 3rd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Funding should pay for maintenance, not features, because every new feature adds to the burden the money was meant to relieve.

    Their wordsFinally, the health of the project depends on issue triage, bug fixes, refactors, and design work more than on new features. In fact, new features increase the maintenance burden.

    ↗How to pay professional maintainerswords.filippo.io 4th of 4 in this piece

    design

    Interesting