Open source project sustainability

Updated 03-Aug-2025

For me, both open source (defined below) and sustainability (some kind of appropriate life-span and level of health) are both important, together. Though also I believe that reasonable business models around closed source (proprietary) should also be sustainable (in a non-rapacious sense).

What is Sustainability?

  • Not necessarily identical with immortality, though usually sustainability is measured in terms of resources (expertise) over time.
  • Project quaility is maintained (or improved) over time.
  • Not tied to a single (usually intermittantly responsive) developer (or cabal).
  • There can be a different maturity stages in terms of sustainability (for example, Wikipedia is hostile to non-insider edits, but some argue it is at a different level of maturity. Hmmm.

What are Open Source Projects?

Will the questions ever end?

  • Nope
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