💵 Financial report (2026-02) #6405
ldez
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Financial Reports
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感同身受 |
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This month was challenging for me.
It started relatively well because the problem related to GitHub sponsors has been fixed (after 7 months).
But the situation has quickly changed: one of our biggest recurring corporate sponsor has just stopped its donation.
This sponsor just stop sponsoring all OSS projects, not only golangci-lint, and I don't know why.
Every recurring sponsor can stop its donation whenever he wants, this is normal, and it happens regularly.
But in this case, this has a huge impact on the incomes of the project.
Following the loss of this sponsor, the average revenue of the golangci-lint organization decreased by $416.67 / month avg (32% of the total incomes).
Additionally, the USD-EUR rate is low ($1 => 0.84€).
As you can imagine, this news deeply affected me.
So this month, I will not publish the financial report of golangci-lint but my financial report.
The review of my year 2025:
go-acme/lego.gomodcachesizeandstructtags).Note:
golangci-lint is not the most used OSS I maintain: golangci-lint is maybe used by thousands of people, but
go-acme/legois used by several software, for example, Traefik relies on lego and it is used by, at least, millions of people.But most of the donations I received directly seems to be related to golangci-lint and not lego.
lego is like the well known XKCD 2347: a library, maintained by "a random person in Nebraska since 2003", that nobody cares about until that "random person" burns out.
Golangci-lint organization received $1317.55 average (after fees) per month in 2025.
I received 153.52€ average (after fees) per month in 2025.
Since May 2025, I pay me, before taxes, 1400€ (~$1660 depending on USD/EUR) every month from the golangci-lint organization incomes.
I live in France, the poverty threshold after taxes is 1216€/month (~$1448).
In summary:
(USD/EUD: 0.84)
The balance per month is negative, but the amount inside the OSC organization is positive, because I only started to pay me in May 2025.
My 2025 financial report:
As you can see, I already lost money every month.
Currently, I fill the gap with money I saved from GitHub Sponsors during 2020-2024 (~7000€), I have less than 1400€ left.
I don't waste money: no restaurants, no cars, no travels, no holidays, I only buy what is strictly necessary.
Now, imagine the same thing but without the sponsor, it will globally ends with a lost of ~1000€ per month...
Having big sponsors is important, but relying too much on them is not sustainable because when they stop their donations, you end up with difficulties.
You can understand why this is critical to have multiple, small or big, recurring donations.
And why I always repeat "Every donation is important".
"Every donation is important" is not a "motivational message", this is the reality: without your support this cannot be sustainable.
I lived several intense and difficult weeks, it was very hard.
Fortunately and unexpectedly, a few weeks after this lost, we welcomed 3 new sponsors (mainly related to my funding email campaign from May 2025).
But sadly, the total is slightly inferior of the lost: $400 vs $500.
My situation is still not sustainable, but it is worth less than it could have been.
I hope you understand that when I say "this is challenging", it is because this is effectively challenging, and I won't be able to do that indefinitely.
If you care about OSS sustainability, please consider supporting golangci-lint or me.
I'm not alone in this kind of situation: if you are using OSS, please support the OSS maintainers directly and/or throught your employer/company.
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