You’re building a million-dollar product on a foundation built by unpaid volunteers. And you think that’s sustainable?
You can’t pay your rent with GitHub stars, and you can’t sustain the internet’s infrastructure with good vibes.
We’ve been sold a beautiful lie. The tech industry treats open source like a magical, self-replenishing resource. We download packages, integrate dependencies, and ship products, all while patting ourselves on the back for being part of the “community.” But as Senko pointed out back in 2016, open source is not a business model. It’s a marketing tactic. The code itself is a commodity, not a moat.
The tension is undeniable: open source thrives on free, communal contribution, yet the very companies that depend on it extract value without reciprocating. We are living in a tragedy of the commons where the most valuable asset—maintainer time—is systematically undercompensated. VC-backed startups treat open source as a loss leader to capture market share, only to pivot to proprietary models the second they need to show revenue.
Open source isn’t a gift economy; it’s a predatory extraction economy disguised as a community.
And it’s about to get much worse. The rise of AI-generated code isn’t freeing up maintainers; it’s drowning them. AI agents are flooding repositories with automated pull requests, turning already exhausted maintainers into unpaid quality assurance testers for bots. The guilt of using free software built by strangers while your company profits is no longer just a moral failing—it’s a systemic risk.
If you work in tech, your entire career depends on open source. Your stack is a Jenga tower of packages maintained by people you’ve never met, funded by nothing but sheer willpower. The solution isn’t another open source license. It isn’t another non-profit foundation. We need to redefine value. If your commercial product relies on an open source dependency, that infrastructure deserves a line item in your budget.
The next critical dependency you rely on won’t just vanish. It will be murdered by neglect. And your stack will be the crime scene.
FAQ
Q: But doesn't open source win through massive adoption and community support?
A: Adoption means nothing if the maintainers quit. A million users won't fix a critical zero-day when the unpaid developer is too burnt out to look at it.
Q: How should companies actually handle open source dependencies?
A: Treat open source tools like critical vendors. If your product breaks without it, allocate budget to sponsor the maintainers or hire them directly.
Q: Isn't AI going to solve the maintainer shortage by writing the code?
A: AI makes it worse. It floods repositories with automated, low-quality PRs, turning human maintainers into unpaid code reviewers for bots.