The project
How the funding works
Three routes for money to reach open-source maintainers.
Open source has a funding problem: the tools everyone runs are often maintained by a handful of people in their spare time. This directory is built around three routes for getting money to them.
1. Direct project support links
Where a funding channel is recorded, the tool page links directly to it: GitHub Sponsors, Open Collective, Liberapay, Polar, or whatever the maintainers themselves set up. Money goes straight to them. We don’t touch it and we don’t take a cut.
2. Sponsorships of the directory (setting up)
Companies will be able to sponsor the directory itself through Open Collective, so the ledger is public and sponsors get proper invoices. Not open yet — this page gets updated when it is.
3. An automatic split back to the projects (planned)
Once sponsorship revenue exists, a fixed share of it (target: 20%) goes into a Drips list containing every listed project, streamed automatically each month. Drips also cascades funds down each project’s own dependency tree, so the small libraries under the tools benefit too. Not active yet — there is no revenue to split.
We will publish the actual numbers here once money is moving. Until then, treat this page as the plan, not a claim.