On: The rise of few-maintainer projects

[chasote]

I'm curious how the new Github Sponsors development plays into the one or very few maintainer "issue." My gut instinct tells me it will be an added incentive to keep the governance of such projects small or solo because how do you deal with distributing the funds over numerous maintainers with vastly different levels of contribution? I guess one could argue that a project valuable enough to attract a large sponsorship would also be too unwieldy for some to handle alone.

But I haven't given that much critical thought and I hate to default towards cynicism immediately after getting presented with a way to help get open source developers some financial support.

[skybrian → chasote]

I agree, it would tend to encourage a smaller core team and a larger number of unpaid contributors. But this is often a workable model. I don't think most drive-by contributors expect to be paid and that seems... fine?

[brian-armstrong → chasote]

I suspect that most small projects won't receive much if any funding anyway.