I'm excited to share what I've been working on with @erikjee: RustNL's #rustlang Maintainers Fund!
Many people and companies contribute to Rust, but there are fewer and fewer paid positions for general maintenance (reviews,cleanups,etc). We need to fix that.
General maintenance is one of the most fundamental jobs in an open source project, but is one of the hardest to get paid for. Adding new features gets you promoted; keeping the lights on does not.
But everything depends on it. Code needs reviews, cleanups, docs. New contributors need mentors, etc.
A significant number of Rust maintainers who got paid for that have lost or quit their job recently. Due to RTO policies, a shift in responsibilities, budget cuts, and/or burnout. This is already quite noticable in the Rust project: longer review queues and more technical debt. This is a problem.
Through RustNL, the non-profit foundation behind the largest Rust conference (RustWeek) and the Rust Project's All Hands, we are setting up a fund to provide stable jobs for Rust maintainers. We want to employ six full-time maintainers in 2026.
Additionally, we'll provide internships and mentorship, to help retain promising new contributors. Not only do we need to make sure the current generation of maintainers doesn't burn out, we need to work on the next generation of maintainers too.
What we need now is companies who rely on Rust to step up and contribute financially. Having your business rely on the work of unpaid volunteers is not sustainable in the long term. It's a risk.
And if your company contributes to Rust, keeping the project well-maintained will accelerate your work.
Over the last few months, we have spoken to the Rust Foundation and several big companies about our plans. The input we've received and the positive reactions so far makes us believe we can make this happen. Today, we are publishing our plans for a wider audience, in search for the required funding.
If your company is interested in funding Rust maintainers, please reach out to me or @erikjee!
You can find our sponsors prospectus here: https://rustnl.org/resources/Rust-Maintainers-Fund.pdf
Let me know if you want to talk! 💛
(Message me through Mastodon, Rust Zulip, or email: mara@rustnl.org)
https://rustnl.org/fund/
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