This. Very very very much.

"That means investing in art, diversity, and creativity. It means addressing the internet’s original sin by building protocol-first commerce1. It means funding shared safety nets and taking user empowerment seriously, taking a cue from the atproto ecosystem and building protocols before products. Over time, we’ll need ways to pool risk across maintainer-driven projects without forcing each one to become its own startup. Goodwill alone isn’t enough. Hope alone doesn’t scale.
(...)
I want to live in a world where efforts like these can thrive. Watching projects in the atproto ecosystem shift our focus back to collaborative, open protocols feels like a glimpse into that future. Supporting the full-time focus of the people doing the work should be the lowest bar to clear."

jcrabapple

2026-02-04 12:38:24

The Missing Middle of Open Source

natemoo.re/posts/missing-middl…

The Missing Middle of Open Source

Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.

^natemoo.re