Open source is great because it empowers tech companies worldwide (like Swan) to build and maintain their own products more easily. But the sustainability of open source is in question. Some projects, used by thousands of companies, rest on the shoulders of just one person! Maintainers lack access to resources, relicensing is an issue — and aside from the moral quandary this situation presents, it's also risky for companies to rely on projects built and maintained by one person only. That’s why I believe these contributors need and deserve support. If more companies contributed to the projects we all rely on, we could resolve these risks and put the moral question to rest.
Swan’s commitment to sponsoring open source projects
Announcing the launch of Swan’s Open Source Sponsorship Program. 🤝 This initiative will see us sponsoring five open-source projects each month, with each project receiving $200 in support. Swan’s own development team will select which projects are sponsored each month, so feel free to reach out to the team if you wish to get some support! We’d love for developers to get at least a fraction of the acknowledgment and rewards they deserve.
We hope you'll join us in this initiative and help us support the open source community, not only by voting for which projects we should support but also by creating your own sponsorship program!
Check out our first sponsored projects:
- Typelevel: Provide type classes, instances, conversions, testing, supplements to the standard library, and more.
- TS-Pattern: The exhaustive Pattern Matching library for TypeScript, with smart type inference.
- FP-TS: Functional programming in TypeScript
- Graphql-code-generator: A tool for generating code based on a GraphQL schema and GraphQL operations (query/mutation/subscription), with flexible support for custom plugins.
- db-scheduler: A persistent cluster-friendly scheduler for Java.
Open source ethos close to our hearts
At Swan, we aim to build with as much openness and transparency as possible, starting with our open platform: public-facing documentation, public sandbox, public pricing… We went further with this commitment when we open-sourced our front-end banking interfaces (reducing time to market of new pilots by 75%). Beyond this, we’ve seen our own team publish some exciting projects of their own:
- Boxed: Functional utility types and functions for TypeScript
- Chicane: A safe router for React and TypeScript
- Swan react-ux-form: A simple, fast, and opinionated form library for React & React Native focusing on UX
- Swan SRP: A modern SRP implementation for Node.js (v15+) and web browsers
Swan relies on many projects like these to run. We hope Swan’s investment in open source development will provide real support to those who bring the projects to life and maintain them, but we know this is just a small dent. I hope to see more and more companies launching their own sponsorship programs so that we can all make open source more sustainable, together.
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