Allocate a documented fraction of your professional income to direct funding of open source maintainers#
What this is, concretely#
This commitment consists of allocating each year a documented fraction of your professional income — a modest percentage of your annual income or an absolute amount — to direct funding of the maintainers of the open source projects you depend on professionally. The main channels: direct sponsorship of individual maintainers via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, or Open Collective; donations to European foundations (NLnet, Document Foundation, Codeberg e.V., Eclipse Foundation Europe); commercial support contracts with companies that pay maintainers.
A modest fraction is enough to formalise the commitment. A freelance developer earning 60,000 euros in annual income who allocates 0.5% of that income to open source sponsorship contributes 300 euros a year, which typically corresponds to 5 maintainers sponsored at 5 euros a month on GitHub Sponsors. That is modest at the individual scale, but multiplied by several thousand European developers it becomes substantial at ecosystem scale.
The commitment includes a public statement of the approach — not necessarily nominative detail, but at least the principle (fraction allocated, type of recipients, frequency). This statement is what distinguishes it from a one-off donation and gives it its signal value.
Why this commitment matters#
Thesis 8 of the manifesto grounds this commitment: “technological autonomy rests less on licenses than on people: without a critical mass of paid maintainers keeping the critical bricks alive, free software becomes a technical debt funded by people other than us.” You benefit daily from the work of maintainers who are often unpaid, who maintain libraries without which your trade would be impossible. Without diffuse support, these maintainers burn out or quit. The January 2022 incidents on colors.js and faker.js, where a maintainer voluntarily sabotaged his own libraries out of frustration at the lack of remuneration, illustrate the fragility of this balance.
The collective effect is massive. When several hundred European developers contribute even 0.3 to 1% of their income, that represents hundreds of thousands of euros annually funding maintainers and foundations. This logic of diffuse support is precisely what thesis 11 of the manifesto calls for: “a serious European digital sovereignty policy is recognised by its investment in foundations, maintainers, and distribution infrastructures.”
The commitment complements dev-003-contribute-european-projects well. When you cannot allocate contribution time, you can allocate funding. The two supports are complementary: code alone does not feed maintainers, funding alone does not maintain code.
A concrete example#
A backend developer employed at a French SME, with annual net income of around 48,000 euros, takes this commitment in May 2026 with a 6-month horizon. He sets a target of 0.75% of his annual net income, i.e. 360 euros a year. The breakdown is built from his daily stack. Four maintainers are sponsored via GitHub Sponsors at 5 euros a month each (240 euros over the year): a FastAPI maintainer, a SQLAlchemy maintainer, a maintainer of a Python Redis client he uses daily, a maintainer of a testing library he likes. An annual donation of 60 euros goes to NLnet Labs (which maintains critical DNS infrastructure). A 60-euro donation goes to the Document Foundation (LibreOffice).
By the end of the 6 months, the setup is in place and payments are automated monthly. The developer publishes on his personal site a short post describing the approach, without naming the sponsored maintainers (for discretion), but sharing the principle and the reasoning. Three readers tell him in the following weeks that they have set up an equivalent approach.
Anti-pattern to avoid#
A one-off donation without follow-through (for example, “I gave 50 euros once to OpenSSL”) does not constitute the commitment as worded, which presupposes regularity and a documented fraction. Conversely, a numerical target not honoured (“I commit to 2% of my income” followed by no actual contribution) is an anti-commitment. The value lies in modesty and regularity rather than in the ambition of the headline.
Success indicators#
By the 6-month horizon, you can reasonably consider this commitment fulfilled if you have set a numerical fraction of your income, put the contributions in place (ideally automated), and published the principle of the approach on your site or in your community. In the long term, the commitment takes shape with annual renewal and possible adjustment of the fraction as your income evolves.
→ Documented in the dossier#
JSON schema category: funding. Default horizon: 6 months. Applicable to: individual declarations only.