Developing in the open and working directly with users and the community is extremely rewarding. Sometimes it's solving the puzzle of a user's bug report on my package. Other times it's getting to give back and contribute a feature/fix to a library I've used. And sometimes it's the satisfaction from knowing that seemingly menial tasks like bumping dependencies can help a vast array of downstream users, from solo devs, to corporations, to academic researchers, and to everyone in between.

I've been extremely fortunate to find mentors, colleagues, and collaborators willing to support my growth as an open-source developer and to encourage my work to be open-source and source-available. Standing on their shoulders, I'm proud to be a maintainer of major Node.js packages like winston (45M+ downloads/month) and its surrounding ecosystem of transports (many more millions of monthly downloads), as well as @colors/colors (60M+ downloads/month). These packages remain, to this day, some of the most popular Node.js packages of all time.

Sponsorship is a forcing function that gives me both the opportunity and the push to dedicate time to maintaining projects like these - and not only maintaining them, but helping foster and grow their communities and drive these projects forward (whether through direct contributions or through encouraging community PRs). Projects like winston and colors have never had any funding for their decade+ of life, and eventually it's necessary to request some modest support in order to keep these projects going stronger than ever.

Sponsors can take advantage of their generosity as they see fit - requesting priority reviews on bug reports, prioritized feature requests and direct influence on roadmaps, etc. And even a small sponsorship to buy me a coffee once a month is a kind token that keeps me motivated to stay involved in these projects.

I commit to dedicating a portion of any funds I receive through sponsorship to sponsor other projects on GitHub. My hope is that we can create a virtuous cycle of supporting one another in the community and more openly give to the projects we use every day for our professional work and hobby projects.