By any measure, the PulseAudio sound server is an important part of most Linux desktops. But, like other free-software projects, PulseAudio is understaffed and relies on volunteers to maintain it. An effort by the most active maintainer, Tanu Kaskinen, to use the Patreon platform to help fund PulseAudio maintenance makes one wonder how much of the free software we depend on is similarly suffering.

It was not that long ago that even critical internet infrastructure was largely being ignored by the companies that relied on it. The Heartbleed fiasco made it obvious that OpenSSL was not thriving with mostly volunteer maintainers. Heartbleed led to the formation of the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), which targets critical infrastructure projects (OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GnuPG, and so on). Initially, the CII provided grants to projects to help fund their development and maintenance, and evidently still does, though it is moving toward using threat modeling to target projects for security auditing according to the FAQ.

That work is great, but it is limited by a number of factors: funding and the interests of its members, primarily. Few of the companies involved have much, if any, interest in the Linux desktop. Some might argue that there aren't any companies with that particular interest, though that would be disingenuous. In any case, though, desktop Linux is a community-supported endeavor, at least more so than server or cloud Linux, which likely means some things are slipping through the cracks.

Kaskinen left his job in 2015 to be able to spend more time on PulseAudio (and some audio packages that he maintains for OpenEmbedded). For the last four months or so, he has been soliciting funds on Patreon. Unlike Kickstarter and other similar systems, Patreon is set up to provide ongoing funding, rather than just a chunk of money for a particular feature or project. Donors pledge a monthly amount to try to support someone's work going forward.

So far, Kaskinen has attracted 18 patrons who provide $77 per month, which approximately covers his rent according to the Patreon page. His needs are rather modest, as he is looking for $340 per month. [Update: These numbers are based on a misunderstanding, see the first comment below.] Patrons get immediate access to his monthly reports, while others must wait a few weeks (reminiscent of a certain weekly publication perhaps). Once they are freely available, the reports are published on his blog. He is actively looking for other reward ideas for those who donate at more than the $1 per month minimum.

A look through the reports gives the impression of an active maintainer working on bugs, reviewing patches, answering questions on IRC, writing documentation, and so on. Much of that could have been done in his "spare time", though presumably at a much slower rate. In the meantime, Kaskinen is burning through his savings to help support the many users of PulseAudio. It is undoubtedly the plight of many maintainers, though most probably just try to fit that work around their day job, rather than to try to do it full time.

There are a number of companies and groups that use PulseAudio as part of their Linux distribution. That starts with the traditional distributions, such as Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, SUSE, and openSUSE, but goes beyond that. Mobile and automobile-focused distributions, such as Tizen, GENIVI, and Automotive Grade Linux, also use (or can use) the audio server. One would think they and others might have an interest in having a full-time PulseAudio maintainer.

It is a dilemma for the free-software world. Our projects will be much better off with full-time maintainers, and lots of projects already have that thanks to various companies in our community, but what should be done for projects that fall through the cracks? Though it is early going for Kaskinen, it is hard to see Patreon-based campaigns being the ultimate solution, though they can certainly help.

The free-software community itself, or at least the individuals who make up a large chunk of it, seem unlikely to be able to solve this problem directly. While that may be unfortunate at some level, the reality is that millions of folks, all over the world, with varying income levels and even awareness of how the software they use comes about, probably cannot be relied upon to directly fund these kinds of projects. For that, it will take organizations and/or companies to help identify, and ultimately fund, maintenance of critical desktop infrastructure.

Plenty of that infrastructure is being funded, of course. The major desktop environments have companies or groups of companies that employ the maintainers, developers, and others for those projects. Web browsers are in good shape, overall, as are some of the office and productivity suites. But there is a second tier of applications (and plumbing in the case of PulseAudio) that may not be receiving the attention it deserves and, perhaps in some cases, requires.

The urgency that Heartbleed provided is probably never going to occur in the Linux desktop realm, however. There is less monoculture and vastly less of an installed base. Android is, of course, a much bigger target, but has a large company behind it and doesn't use much from desktop Linux (other than the kernel).

The kernel model for maintainers seems to work quite well, overall. Companies employ maintainers of various subsystems to, essentially, continue maintaining. Those companies get the benefit of having those people on their staff as well as the benefit of a better-maintained kernel for themselves and others. But the kernel is unique; other parts of our free-software desktop infrastructure are not so centrally placed, thus not so well-maintained.

One hopes that Kaskinen can find enough patrons to meet his modest needs to continue with his work. But it would be better still if we could find a way as a community to make it possible for maintainers (and others) to do their work without giving up all of their free time—or their savings.