Open Infrastructure is Not Free

There was a piece of news last week that might not be very noticeable, but it's really important for the whole open source community. On Sep 23 open source foundations like Sonatype (Maven Central), Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), Python Software Foundation (PyPI) and others published a joined letter - Open Infrastructure is Not Free: A Joint Statement on Sustainable Stewardship.

What problem they highlighted:
🔸 Open source infrastructure is the foundation of any modern digital infrastructure.
🔸 User expects this infrastructure to be secure, fast, reliable, and global.
🔸 Public registries are often used to distribute proprietary software (it may have open source license but it can work only as a part of a paid product).
🔸 Commercial organizations heavily use open source infrastructure as free CDN and distribution systems.
🔸 Open source infrastructure is supported by non-profit foundations and enthusiasts. They don't have enough resources to meet growing expectations.
🔸 Load on the infrastructure grows exponentially, donations - linearly.
🔸 This situation produces a disbalance: billion-dollars ecosystems live on services that are built on goodwill, unpaid weekends and sponsorships.

The problem is obvious: too many companies make money on open source infrastructure without giving a cent back. They profit, while the real costs are carried by volunteers and foundation sponsors. The claim is fair enough.

Proposed ideas:
🔸 Commercial Partnership: Fund infrastructure in proportion to usage.
🔸 Tiered Access: Free access for individual contributors, paid options for scale and performance for high-volume consumers.
🔸 Additional Capabilities: Provide additional capabilities that might be interesting for commercial entities (e.g. some statistics or analytics)

The authors said that this letter is only the beginning: they will start to actively work with foundations, governments, and industry partners to improve the situation. Looks like in 2-3 years we'll have totally different infrastructure, and, most probably, it will not be free.

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