Open source runs the world. Who's keeping it alive?
Your phone, your bank, your streaming service, the router in your office: they all run on open source code maintained by people who get paid next to nothing. I know because I was one of them. Simbiosi.org is where I dig into why this keeps happening and what we can do about it.
The problem isn't technical
It's about psychology and incentives. The free rider effect. The bystander problem. Invisible infrastructure that everyone depends on and nobody thinks about. Companies worth billions build their products on code maintained with the budget of a small NGO. The maintainers burn out, and nobody notices until something breaks.
I lived this for 9 years. I maintained Remmina, a remote desktop client used by over 150,000 people. 8,000+ commits from 200+ contributors, CI/CD pipelines, issue triage, code reviews, releases. The donations I received: about 1,000 CHF per year. That's roughly 110 CHF per month for what was basically a second job.
What I do here
I make visible the gap between what open source people build and what they get back. Real data, real projects, real numbers. The goal isn't to audit anyone: it's to show the world what these maintainers and foundations are doing, and who's benefiting without contributing.
- Case studies - I go through the finances, the donor data, and show how the value these projects create compares to the support they receive
- Behavioral analysis - Why companies and users don't fund the open source they depend on every day, and what the research says about changing that
- Resources for maintainers - What I've learned over 9 years and what I keep learning from others
The name
Simbiosi: symbiosis. Two organisms living together, both benefiting. That's what open source should be: companies and communities sustaining each other. Not extraction. Not charity. Mutual benefit.