Developers get better maintained open source. Maintainers get paid.
The challenge
Unmaintained code slows you down and adds risk
92% of applications developed today contain open source components. Yet the vast majority are not maintained to the standard you would expect of commercial software. And understandably so, since most open source maintainers haven’t traditionally been paid for their work.
Using open source is free—if your time is worth nothing.
Like any software, without careful maintenance, entropy sets in and things start to go wrong: broken builds, licensing mistakes, security incidents. Without someone else accountable to do the work, the burden of unmaintained dependencies falls on your team, slowing you down and taxing your capacity to build new things.
What if you could have the flexibility to build with open source together with the confidence of commercial-grade software? Maybe you could move fast and not break things.
That’s why we created the Tidelift Subscription.
92%
of applications contain open source libraries
The solution
The Tidelift Subscription
A managed open source subscription that gives you the flexibility to build with open source together with the confidence of commercial-grade software.
Covering application development in JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, and more.
A better business model for open source
Better for software development teams
A managed open source subscription backed by the creators and maintainers who built the packages you depend on.
Erlend Sogge Heggen, VP of Community at Discourse
“Discourse has become a Tidelift subscriber not only to benefit from professional-grade assurances around software that’s integral to our business, but to constructively partner with the individuals who create those packages. Paying the maintainers is something we know is effective, and it’s also an urgent priority for our business, since it ensures the technology we rely on is maintained and dependable.”
Better for open source maintainers
A way to get paid for the value you create, simply by keeping your projects well maintained.
Evan You, founder of Vue
“Tidelift has a really interesting approach to funding open source work. It’s a pretty simple concept: maintainers get paid and the organizations who use their projects get the support and dependability they need in return. I believe that this model helps us move closer to a future where many more maintainers like me can afford to work on their projects full time."
As featured in
“What enterprises and open source alike would benefit from is a model which provides businesses with high quality, dependable support for a much wider range of products and developers with the incentive to provide it. This is exactly the opportunity Tidelift is focused on.”
—Stephen O’Grady, Co-founder and Principal Analyst at RedMonk
Resources to get you started
What software development teams should know about open source licenses
Tidelift cofounder and licensing expert Luis Villa discusses what you should know about open source licenses.
