Open Source Needs to be Financially Symbiotic

I’ve been laid off twice in the past year and a half trying to navigate my professional career through the moderate success that has followed 11ty. I don’t feel as though I’ve been particularly successful at it, to be frank. What I have felt is largely expendable.

I don’t blame any companies or individuals for those feelings—for me it’s representative of a larger problem with the incentives of open source software. This is further complicated by the influence of temporary and unsustainable ideas of “free” shaped by venture capital, but I digress.

In seven years, the 11ty project has undergone various levels of funding:

1. After-hours side-project
2. Full time employment-sponsored by one company
3. Part time sponsored by one company
4. Independently full-time community-funded

Each of this had their benefits and drawbacks; each a unique reflection of the companies that I was coupled to at the time (and most importantly: the economic environment of the funding of these companies).

Boundaries

Independent of funding, the raw truth about open source software development is that it can be very parasitic if you don’t set boundaries.

1. Developers may place demands on your time in ways that are unhealthy and one-sided.
2. Companies (even those with trillion dollar market caps) may use your software without investing appropriately into it (via developer resources or direct monetary contributions)… and may also have expectations that are unhealthy and one-sided.

It can be quite tempting to shirk the guardrails of healthy boundaries to pursue growth. Growth can unlock a lot of second-order things: power, influence, and sometimes money (here be dragons).

Regardless, the single throughline that is consistent for all four types of financial situationships I’ve been in is this: the further your job is from the direct bottom line and business needs of the company that you work for, the more expendable you are.

Truths

Eleventy received an overwhelming amount of support from individuals that believe in the project and for that I am so grateful. At time of writing the Open Collective has had 668 different financial contributors. Some comparisons gathered from Open Collective (in ascending order): Astro has 106 contributors, Solid 124, Jekyll 148, Preact 234, Svelte 497, Nuxt 530, and Vue 805.

But given the scale of these contributions, Eleventy wasn’t quite popular enough to pay one full-time staff/lead developer salary via our Open Collective contributions alone. If I were just starting my career fresh out of college (I’m not), this would have been an easier hurdle to clear.

Our sustainability fundraising goal reflected and included this truth ($6k recurring per month) and I understood that I would have to supplement with some kind of paid offering before the runway dried up: whether that was a SaaS product, Pro-tier, Paid support, or Consulting.

That’s when the fine folks at Font Awesome dropped in with an exciting opportunity that I believe will be a win-win for everyone (and not a repeat of the financially decoupled business models we’ve tried before): 11ty (the project) is joining Font Awesome (the company).

The game plan hasn’t changed—it’s been upgraded with the stability (and mentorship) of a well-established software business moving forward.

Next Steps

Again, to be very clear we’ll continue to develop and maintain the Eleventy open source project as before. I’m super excited and feel very lucky to get up every morning to work on Eleventy—which I think is a very rare feeling seven years into any software project.

I’ve updated all of the blog posts to reflect that we’re winding down our sustainability fundraising campaign. If you would like to wind down your personal individual recurring contributions—please feel free to do so. Do note that any existing and future Open Collective funds collected will continue to be spent to fund open source work for 11ty.

As always, if you have questions (even difficult or awkward questions)—please hit me up on Mastodon (or any other social media that I check less frequently 😅).

Previously

1. Feb 2018 Introducing Eleventy, a New Static Site Generator
2. Jan 2020 Now Deploying to Netlify
3. Feb 2022 Full Time Open Source Development for Eleventy, Sponsored by Netlify
4. Jun 2023 The Next Phase of Eleventy: Return of the Side Project
5. Jul 2023 Eleventy and CloudCannon: New Best Friends
6. May 2024 I Need Your Help to Make 11ty Fully Independent and Sustainable in 2024
7. Sep 2024 11ty is Joining Font Awesome