“Virtually all maintainers are either volunteers or full-time employees of large companies. Foundations on average don’t pay maintainers.”
Valsorda left the Go team at Google and now earns his old Google compensation from six retainer clients, including Tailscale, Protocol Labs and a Mullvad sister company. Every tier is five figures a year, which is cheaper than one employee for a company that depends on Go cryptography. It took four months of enterprise sales pitches to get there. The industry built itself on free maintenance and only pays when someone shows up with a prospectus and an invoice.