OSS Funding Is Broken — A Maintainer’s Perspective from FakerJS

The author, a FakerJS maintainer, argues that open source funding is structurally broken because companies and users treat financial support as optional while expecting constant maintenance work. Rather than relying solely on donations, the author advocates for securing employer-allocated time for OSS, distributing project responsibilities across the community, and shifting expectations so that production users contribute back meaningfully. The post emphasizes that this is not an isolated case but a systemic pattern affecting projects across all ecosystems.