What happens to the open-source software we depend on when the people maintaining it can no longer afford to?
For Kelvin Omereshone, this question was personal before it became a bigger mission. As the lead maintainer of Sails.js and a developer building tools for the JavaScript community, he understood the work that goes into creating and maintaining open-source software. He also understood how difficult it could be to find sustainable funding for that work.
Open-source software powers much of the technology developers use every day. But behind the libraries, frameworks and tools that make building software easier are people who spend their time creating, improving and maintaining them. That work takes time, skill and resources, yet finding sustainable ways to fund it remains a challenge for many maintainers.
That led him to look more closely at how open-source developers could get financial support for the projects they were building. What began as a search for a way to fund his own projects grew into FLOSSAfrica .
FLOSSAfrica is a platform designed to help African open-source maintainers showcase their projects, get discovered, connect with sponsors and receive financial support for their work.
Helping open-source maintainers get discovered.
A developer might maintain a useful library or contribute to software that other people depend on, but potential sponsors may never discover their work.
These software needs updates, bugs need fixing, documentation needs attention, and users need help. Maintainers often continue doing this work long after the excitement of an initial release has passed.
When that effort is difficult to fund, sustaining a project becomes harder. This is why funding open-source maintenance matters alongside funding new ideas. The tools developers rely on need people who can keep improving them.
By connecting maintainers with sponsors, FLOSSAfrica is creating more ways for people to support the work happening across the African open-source ecosystem.
FLOSSAfrica gives maintainers a place to connect their GitHub profiles and list their projects, and through the platform, sponsors can make one-time contributions to individual maintainers in naira or dollars.
FLOSSAfrica also offers FLOSS Pools, a shared funding route for supporting participating maintainers, with public contribution and payout information.
How it works with Bachs
FLOSSAfrica integrates Bachs Connect through Sails Pay to support its payment experience, connected-account onboarding and payouts to supported bank destinations. The integration brings payment functionality into the platform, allowing FLOSSAfrica to focus on the experience it is building for maintainers and sponsors.
Bachs Connect is designed to help builders incorporate payment and payout capabilities into their own products rather than having to build every part of that infrastructure themselves.
For a platform like FLOSSAfrica, that means payments are part of a broader product experience: a sponsor discovers a maintainer, chooses to contribute, and uses the platform's funding flow.
The underlying integration helps support that experience, subject to the applicable account approval, destination and processing requirements.
Building more opportunities for African developers
Kelvin's work with FLOSSAfrica sits within a wider contribution to the developer ecosystem. Through his work on Sails.js and The Boring JavaScript Stack, he has helped build tools and resources for developers working with JavaScript.
FLOSSAfrica extends that commitment by focusing on another part of the development journey: helping maintainers get their work in front of people who may want to support it financially.
If you maintain an open-source project, explore FLOSSAfrica to see the maintainers and projects featured on the platform.
If you are building a platform that needs payment collection, connected-account onboarding or payouts, explore Bachs Connect to learn more about the infrastructure available to builders.
And if you are someone who benefits from open-source software, consider finding a project whose work you value and learning how you can support the people behind it.