fund
You become a patron
Pick a grade. Your monthly patronage funds payroll and reserves a capacity band for the dependencies that matter.
Open source · patronage initiative
Who maintains the open source you depend on?
We do. A funded team owns the libraries your product runs on — triage, fixes, security patches, releases, on a written SLA. One monthly retainer.
- Reserved maintainer capacity
- A written SLA
- A named maintainer
- Cancel on notice
The maintenance gap
Everyone runs on it. Almost no one is paid to keep it alive.
Open source is infrastructure now — and it’s maintained by people who are overworked, unpaid, or already gone.
- 98%
of audited codebases run on open source
Black Duck OSSRA 2026
- 1,180
open-source components in the average app
Black Duck OSSRA 2026
- >90%
of codebases already carry serious maintenance debt
Black Duck OSSRA 2026
- <40%
of GitHub Sponsors profiles ever get a donation
GitHub Sponsors research
A tip jar doesn’t make payroll.
Only 26.6% of Open Collective projects get any money. Maintainers don’t want tips — they want a wage.
81% of maintainers want steady monthly income
Tidelift maintainer survey · Open Collective
You re-apply the same patches every release.
The average org keeps 86 private forks and spends ~5,160 engineer-hours per release re-applying patches upstream never merged.
≈ 5,160 hours / release cycle on private forks
Linux Foundation OSS ROI survey
Neglect has a price.
Workarounds for missing fixes cost companies $670,000 a year on average. The code is free; the gaps are not.
$670k / year average cost of workarounds
Linux Foundation OSS ROI survey
The manifesto
Patrons of the digital commons
In the Renaissance, the work that outlived everyone was made by craftspeople — and paid for by patrons who knew that beauty and infrastructure both need someone to keep the lights on.
Software is the same. The libraries holding up your product were written for love, in the gaps of other jobs. That held until the whole industry put its full weight on it.
This isn’t guilt or charity. It’s a trade as old as the aqueducts: you fund the keepers, the commons stays standing — for you and everyone downstream.
Mission is a small, funded team of maintainers, working in the open. We adopt the libraries you can’t live without, answer when they break, and train the next generation to do the same. The cartridge still works because someone keeps blowing on it. That someone should be paid.
How it works
A patronage loop, not a charity drive
You fund the team. The team maintains the commons and trains its successors. A healthy commons makes you faster. The loop pays for itself.
- maintain
We adopt your stack
We take ownership of those libraries: triage, review, security backports, releases, compatibility work.
- respond
You get a clock, not a maybe
Something breaks, you open a ticket, a human answers inside your SLA window. Business hours, not someday.
- grow
Juniors are trained in the open
Every patronage funds mentorship. Juniors learn maintenance on real issues, in public, and become the maintainers we’ll need.
The four steps form a continuous loop: step four feeds back into step one, so the patronage keeps funding itself.
The team
Run by a working open-source shop whose libraries are in production today
Mission is run by Managed Code — a .NET open-source community whose libraries run in production at other companies. Not a thought experiment. We already do the work.
Open Source Community for .NET Developers — reliable, actively maintained, community-driven.
Repositories maintained by Managed Code
- StorageNuGet 482,954
Cloud blob abstraction for .NET across Azure, AWS, GCP, local and browser-backed storage.
- CommunicationNuGet 289,556
Result pattern for .NET with typed failures, ASP.NET Core integration and Orleans support.
- MarkItDownNuGet 20,218
C# document-to-Markdown converter for files and Office docs, tuned for LLM and search workflows.
- Orleans.SignalRNuGet 57,136
SignalR over Microsoft Orleans for distributed real-time apps, with client and server packages.
- MimeTypesNuGet 126,540
IANA and Apache MIME/media type lookup, metadata and content detection for .NET.
- MCPGatewayNuGet 6,080
Searchable MCP/AITool gateway for .NET, built on Microsoft.Extensions.AI and the official MCP SDK.
We’ve kept these libraries alive on our own time since 2021. Mission is how we finally pay the people who do the work — and train the ones who’ll do it next.
- 1,100+
- GitHub stars across active repos
- 40+
- maintained open-source repositories
- 1.3M+
- NuGet downloads of our packages
- 2021
- shipping in the open since
Public GitHub and NuGet figures refreshed 2026-06-28 — check us yourself at github.com/managedcode.
Who does the maintenance
People who love the craft and the tooling — and strong engineers burned out by the grind who want to do good work somewhere calm. Both ship better software.
- Maintainers who love the boring, important work
- Senior engineers recovering from burnout
- Juniors with fire, learning in public
The difference
Community goodwill vs. a number you can plan around
A GitHub issue is answered eventually, by whoever has time. A patron gets a clock.
| What you get | Community goodwill | With a patronage |
|---|---|---|
| First human response | 43–83% of PRs within a working day — and that’s the best-maintained projects, on a good week | as fast as 4 business hours for critical Senior issues; 8 business hours on the recommended grade |
| Security fix after the patch already exists | median 4 days from patch to release; 17% of npm flaws still sitting open a year later | same-day triage on Senior; fix or backport plan scoped to impact |
| Who actually owns your dependency | a volunteer, if they’re still around | a named, funded maintainer |
| When the maintainer walks away | the project quietly goes dark — game over for the lone maintainer | the team already has a successor in training |
| What a fix that never lands costs you | ~$670k/year in workarounds | folded into your patronage |
First human response
Community
43–83% of PRs within a working day — and that’s the best-maintained projects, on a good week
With Mission
as fast as 4 business hours for critical Senior issues; 8 business hours on the recommended grade
Security fix after the patch already exists
Community
median 4 days from patch to release; 17% of npm flaws still sitting open a year later
With Mission
same-day triage on Senior; fix or backport plan scoped to impact
Who actually owns your dependency
Community
a volunteer, if they’re still around
With Mission
a named, funded maintainer
When the maintainer walks away
Community
the project quietly goes dark — game over for the lone maintainer
With Mission
the team already has a successor in training
What a fix that never lands costs you
Community
~$670k/year in workarounds
With Mission
folded into your patronage
Response figures: a study of 111,094 PRs across ten mature OSS projects (43–83% first human response within a working day). Security: median 4 days patch-to-release; npm vulnerability-lifetime study (17.4% still open after a year). Cost: Linux Foundation OSS ROI survey.
Patronage
Subscribe to a team, not a developer
This isn’t buying developer hours. It’s a salary-grade retainer: you fund a maintainer-grade seat in the team, and the team reserves a realistic capacity band for your stack. Fund payroll. Get ownership, a clock, and upstream fixes.
Junior
Junior-grade patronage, roughly junior-grade payroll.
A practical lane for a small stack: triage, reproductions, small fixes, and reports.
Maintainer-hours / mo10–15- Up to 2 dependencies watched
- Small fixes, upgrades and issue reproduction
- Monthly maintenance report
- Your logo on the patrons’ wall
- Recommended
Mid
Mid-grade patronage, roughly mid-level payroll.
The default operating lane: a named maintainer, enough capacity for real upstream work, sane SLA.
Maintainer-hours / mo25–40- Up to 3 dependencies adopted
- Priority issue & PR review
- Quarterly roadmap call
- A named maintainer
Senior
Senior-grade patronage, roughly senior-grade payroll.
For critical dependencies: senior ownership, faster triage, security/backport planning, and mentorship budget.
Maintainer-hours / mo45–60- Up to 5 dependencies, plus backport planning
- A named senior maintainer and a private channel
- Mentorship budget for a junior
- A seat at the public roadmap
- 01Email us your stack
- 02We scope it on a 30-min call
- 03You get a capacity band, a named maintainer and an SLA
Billed monthly. Capacity bands are planning ranges, not billable-hour packs: response windows mean first human response, not guaranteed fix time. Your patronage funds maintainers, mentoring, release work, security triage, and operating buffer. Exact capacity, dependencies, coverage hours, and SLA land in your patronage agreement.
The goal
Mission starts at $32,768 a month
A working team runs on about $32,768 a month — every month. That covers senior-led maintenance, delivery capacity, junior mentorship, release/security time, and the operating buffer that makes an SLA real. Founding patrons have committed $8k; you’re billed only when your maintainer starts.
24
$8k committed toward launch
$8k/mo from founding patrons$32,768/mo to launch
Become a founding patron
Run by Managed Code — 1,100+ GitHub stars and 1.3M+ NuGet downloads already shipped. Figures illustrative while Mission is in launch.
Become a patron
Tell us what you run on
No commitment yet — just the shape of your stack. We scope it, suggest a grade, and send back a written SLA and a named maintainer. You decide from there.
- A scoped proposal, not a sales call
- A grade, an SLA and a named maintainer
- We reply within two business days
Got it.
We’ll read your stack and come back within two business days with a scoped proposal — a capacity band, an SLA, and a named maintainer.
Work with us
Maintain things that matter, at a sane pace.
We hire maintainers and mentor juniors into the role. Salaried, in the open, at a sane pace. If you love this work — or used to — there’s a desk here.
Maintainers
You love the craft and want it funded and respected. Bring your taste for the boring, important work.
Apply to maintainRecovering from burnout
A strong engineer who needs a calmer orbit for a while. Good work, lights on, no death march.
Talk to usJuniors with fire
Mentored 3–5 hours a week, learning maintenance in public — the fastest path from junior to senior.
Apply to learn
Knock on the dooropensource@managed-code.com
Choose a path above and we’ll show the exact subject line here.
FAQ
Questions a careful engineer asks
How is this different from GitHub Sponsors?
Sponsorships are donations — under 40% of profiles ever get one, with no obligation. Mission is a contract: reserved maintainer capacity, a written SLA, and a named maintainer who owns your dependencies. The money pays salaries.
Be honest — will anyone actually pay for this?
We don’t need everyone to. A handful of patrons funds a maintainer — we’re not waiting for the whole industry to come around, and we’d rather staff the commons for the companies who already get it. Enough is enough. Think of it as our stake in the future of the code we all ship on.
Why not just donate to each project we depend on?
Because it doesn’t scale and it doesn’t add up. No enterprise can realistically send small tips to every dependency in its tree — and even if it could, scattered tips never reach payroll. Mission pools your patronage into a funded team and reserves capacity for the specific dependencies you name.
What’s in it for Managed Code?
We get to pay the people who keep open source alive — maintainers, full- or part-time — and train juniors into the role. We’re already doing this work; it should be funded properly. If the people already doing it don’t, who will?
What counts as a maintainer-hour?
A focused maintenance hour on the dependencies you adopt: triage, review, fixes, security backports, releases, upgrades, reproductions, and answering your engineers. It is not a generic developer-hour pack; each grade reserves a planning band, and the final allocation is scoped in the SLA.
What if you don’t maintain the library we need?
Normal case. You name the dependencies; we evaluate them, talk to upstream, and take them on. Patronage is shaped around your stack.
Do we have to be a .NET shop?
.NET is home turf — that’s where we’re strongest. Other ecosystems we take case by case. Tell us your stack and we’ll be straight about what we can own.
Where is the team based?
Managed Code is remote-first, with EU business-day coverage first. US overlap, weekend rotation, and 24/7-style escalation are custom scope, not implied by the public grades.
How is this different from a vendor support contract?
A vendor supports their product. We maintain open code anyone can use, with fixes pushed upstream. You get reliability without a walled garden.
How do juniors fit in without slowing things down?
Mentorship works when it’s budgeted, not bolted on. Senior review and mentor time are part of the model; juniors learn on real issues, in public, but they are not the only owner of your incident.
Where does the money go?
Maintainer salaries and junior mentorship. Patronage, hours, and outcomes are reported in the open, the same way we ship code.
Is there a commitment — and can we cancel?
Maintenance only pays off when it’s continuous, so we ask for a real commitment to start — a quarter — long enough to actually adopt your stack. After that you’re never locked in: give notice, we hand off cleanly, and you walk. If the monthly reports don’t show value, you shouldn’t be renewing.
The trade
Put a funded maintainer behind your stack.
The open source your product runs on shouldn’t hang on a volunteer’s spare time. Fund maintained code your team can rely on.