I’m excited to be a part of the new Software Stewardship Lab, which is launching today! The Software Stewardship Lab is a new organization dedicated to funding research on open source sustainability, a topic very near and dear to me that I’ve been focused on for the past few years. The entire technology ecosystem relies on open source infrastructure, and there are some great organizations funding maintainers and projects, but at the Software Stewardship Lab, we’re focused on funding the research that helps us all answer questions about important topics like analysis of critical dependencies and packages analysis, which ones are / are not well-maintained, and how the maintainers of those open source projects are handling the load while avoiding burnout. 

I’m part of the team shepherding this effort. Many of the others are people that I’ve been following and have a deep respect for the work that they have been doing, so I am looking forward to continuing to learn from all of them! The team includes: Our Executive Director Vlad-Stefan Harbuz (Open Source Pledge / Open Source Endowment), Andrew Nesbitt (ecosyste.ms), Miranda Heath (report on burnout in Open Source), Daniel Roe, (Nuxt / npmx), Matias Capeletto aka patak (npmx), Mike McQuaid (Homebrew), and myself.

But we can’t do this alone. We’re looking for organizations to fund the important research that we’re doing at the Software Stewardship Lab, so that people can get paid for focusing on research around software supply chain security and maintainer burnout. Please have a look at our sponsorship page for more details about how you can help support this critical work.

You can learn more about the lab by reading our announcement post and exploring our website.

I mentioned earlier that open source sustainability is a deeply important topic for me. I think it’s important for maintainers to have the funding and other resources that they need to build projects that can become sustainable over the long haul. I’ve written many articles related to open source project sustainability, so I won’t say more now, but will instead point you to a few previous posts from my blog:

• The Impact of Funding for Sustainable Open Source Projects
• Contributor Sustainability Impacts Risk and Adoption of OSS Projects
• Sustainable Open Source Leadership
• From Data to Action: Building Healthy and Sustainable Open Source Projects
• Funding Open Source Sustainability at CHAOSScon and FOSDEM
• From First PR To Lifelong Impact: Helping People Thrive in Open Source
• Educating the Next Generation of Open Source Project Contributors
• Open Source Software: A Path to Building Leadership Skills

If you want feedback or help with open source strategy, sustainability, governance, or related open source topics, I’m available for consulting engagements.

As with everything I write, this was written by a human without the use of LLMs or other AI assistance.