The Ecosystem Sustainability Program (ESP) is an opt-in OpenJS partner program to help secure outdated software and create new revenue streams for our projects. Working in partnership with the Foundation and participating projects, ESP partners provide a revenue share based on sales generated through co-marketing efforts.
Eligible projects that opt into the program receive revenue that can be used to:
- Grow their community
- Pay contractors
- Support travel
- Cover other project-related expenses
For a project to participate in the program:
- A partner must be providing support to end-of-life (EOL) versions of the project
- The project must be willing to place links to the partner on various pages/repositories where EOL versions are mentioned
- The project must be willing to manage funds via Open Collective.
Projects that are interested in participating in the program should contact operations@openjsf.org.
Because funds are distributed to the project and in most cases not an individual, we suggest creating an Open Collective account and project collective.
In most cases, projects do not have bank accounts and must sign up with Open Source Collective to be a fiscal host. This means Open Collective will hold the funds on your behalf, handle taxes, and enable you to pay vendors and contractors.
- Payments are made to projects every 6 months
- Project payments are excluded from the Linux Foundation General & Administrative (G&A) fee
- Open Collective charges a 10% fee on incoming funds if it is used as a fiscal host. The Open Collective Docs provide detailed information on fees.
The project readme and website should clearly indicate which versions of the project are supported and which are not. Here’s a great example from the Node.js website:
The goal of prominently placing referral links is to maximize the likelihood that a user who is stuck on an unsupported version will learn of the existence of alternatives. This might mean that, prior to an EOL milestone or a major version release, one would temporarily have a prominent banner or link.
- Projects should have a prominent Version Support Page
- Referral links to partners must be placed within the top ⅓ of the page
- The Version Support Page must link to partner pages for the versions our partners support
- When documenting which versions are no longer receiving patches, consider adding a link with copy: “read more about extended support options” that directs to an EOL page.
- Project-specific referral links will be provided as part of the onboarding process.
In the 3 to 12 months before a version goes EOL, it would be ideal to add a prominent banner on the entire project's homepage indicating that the version is going EOL, the date upon which it will go EOL, and a link to the Version Support Page.
HeroDevs has offered to directly assist projects by providing specific recommendations and, upon request, utilizing their resources and staff for design and PR filing.