We’re Victor and Tony, founders of DevFlight (https://devflight.com). We help open-source maintainers make money. Think of us as agents for open-source maintainers.
We met last year through the Indie Hackers community. It’s one of the luckiest things that’s ever happened to us. We clicked immediately. It became clear we share an obsession with building things to make developers’ lives easier. We began working on small developer-centric projects together.
We started DevFlight after recognizing maintainers are the most underserved developers. They provide immense value and get little in return. We’ve spoken with many maintainers who’ve told us the current open-source development model is unsustainable for them. Their projects often end up being a second full-time job without pay. Some have to stop supporting their projects altogether due to a lack of resources.
It’s time to start paying maintainers well for their work. Making open-source development sustainable will benefit everyone in the long-term. Our vision is to make it possible for maintainers to receive a stable income that accurately reflects the value they bring to companies. We’re accomplishing this by connecting maintainers with companies who will pay them.
If you’re a maintainer, apply now on our website to join the waitlist. We’re currently working with a small group of maintainers from popular projects. We’ll gradually expand this group. Shoot us an email to learn more. We’d love to chat with you.
We aim to make the process of hiring maintainers dead simple for companies. We communicate when maintainers are available and what types of work they can provide. If your company is interested in learning more, please reach out to us.
Companies are paying for things like priority email and on-demand support from maintainers, feature request prioritization, continued development of the project, faster bug fixes, and guaranteed project stability. This is not an exhaustive list.
We take 10% from every contract we negotiate. We’re aware the contract model doesn’t work for everyone. We’re exploring other revenue models based on what’s best for our maintainer network. We’d be particularly interested in hearing any ideas about this from the HN community.
This is a difficult problem to solve, because it’s fundamentally more of a human problem than a software one. Companies often aren’t aware of all the open-source software they’re dependent on. Many also have complex purchasing requirements and no clear understanding of how their company can directly benefit from paying maintainers. Solving this problem requires better communication, more transparency, and new systems.
We know the HN community has a wealth of experience and knowledge on this topic. We’re excited to listen to any thoughts and experiences you’re willing to share with us. We want to continue to learn and evaluate how we’re approaching this problem, so fire away!
Victor and Tony