Frequently Asked Questions

If your question isn’t listed below, consider asking on the Open Source Maintenance Fee Discussions.

Q: Who pays the fee?

All individuals and organizations that generate revenue and all government agencies that use an Open Source Project which requires a Maintenance Fee must pay the fee. Also, Open Source Projects that require a Maintenance Fee, must pay any fees required by their dependencies.

Q: How much is the fee?

$10 per month per project is the norm for most projects. However, projects may set their own pricing tiers, so be sure to check with each project.

Q: What if I don’t want to pay the Maintenance Fee?

That’s fine. You can download the project’s source code and follow the Open Source license for the software.

Do not open issues. Do not ask questions. Do not download releases. Do not reference packages via a package manager. Do not use anything other than the source code released under the Open Source license.

Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and need to pay the Maintenance Fee.

Q: I paid the fee, why aren’t the maintainers fixing my bugs and answering my questions now?

The Maintenance Fee keeps the project running. It does NOT pay for support. Some projects do offer additional support programs that provide bug fixes or SLAs for answers, so investigate those options if you need guarantees.

Q: If I use a project and that project depends on other projects do I need to pay all of them?

No. You only pay the Maintenance Fee to the projects you directly reference. Your relationship is only with the projects you choose to use. The maintainers of those projects may choose to depend on other projects and, if so, there is a relationship between the maintainer and the next-level of dependencies. And so on, and so on. In the end, the dependency choices other maintainers make do not impact your Maintenance Fee, even though they will impact your product.

Q: Why not donate to a project?

Donations are a great way to reward maintainers for exemplary work. But donations are like bonuses, you like to get them but you can’t count on them every year. Regular contributions from the Maintenance Fee enables maintainers to make plans how best to keep the project running.

Q: I heard money won’t solve Open Source problems.

That’s not a question. But it is true that money won’t solve every problem Open Source Projects face. However, paying maintainers is a very direct incentive to encourage them to keep their projects running. By keeping their projects running, more users may start paying the Maintenance Fee, again encouraging the maintainers to keep the project running. It’s a virtuous feedback loop.