I’ve written a number of articles over the years about open source software supply chains, and some of the issues confronting open source sustainability. The ultimate thrust of my supply chain advocacy culminated in this article imploring users to take control of their supply chains. I naively thought that by bringing attention to supply chain issues, more companies would step up to maintain the parts that were important to them. When I first started brining attention to this matter, it was November 2014, when I keynoted for the first time at a Linux Foundation event. Over the next 3 years, I continued to evolve my view of supply chains, settling on this view of supply chain “funnels”:

So, what has happened since I last published this work? On the plus side, lots of people are talking about open source supply chains! On the downside, no one is drawing the obvious conclusion: we need companies to step up on the maintenance of said software. In truth, this has always been the missing link. Unfortunately, what has happened instead is that we now have a number of security vendors generating lots of reports that show thousands of red lights flashing “danger! danger!” to instill fear in any CISO that open source software is going to be their undoing at any given moment. Instead of creating solutions to the supply chain problem, vendors have instead stepped in to scare the living daylights out of those assigned the thankless task of protecting their IT enterprises.

Securing Open Source Supply Chains: Hopeless?

Originally, Linux distributions signed on for the role of open source maintainers, but the world has evolved towards systems that embrace language ecosystems with their ever-changing world of libraries, runtimes, and frameworks. Providing secure, reliable distributions that also tracked and incorporated the changes of overlaid language-specific package management proved to be a challenge that distribution vendors have yet to adequately meet. The uneasy solution has been for distribution vendors to provide the platform, and then everyone re-invents (poorly) different parts of the wheel for package management overlays specific to different languages. In short, it’s a mess without an obvious solution. It’s especially frustrating because the only way to solve the issue in the current environment would be for a single vendor to take over the commercial open source world and enforce by fiat a single package management system. But that’s frankly way too much power to entrust to a single organization. The organizations designed to provide neutral venues for open source communities, foundations, have also not stepped in to solve the core issues of sustainability or the lack of package management standardization. There have been some efforts that are noteworthy and have made a positive impact, but not the extent that is needed. Everyone is still wondering why certain critical components are not adequately maintained and funded, and everyone is still trying to undertand how to make language-specific package ecosystems more resilient and able to withstand attacks from bad-faith users and developers. (note: sometimes the call *is* coming from inside the house)

But is the supply chain situation hopeless? Not at all. Despite the inability to solve the larger problems, the fact is that every milestone of progress brings us a step closer to more secure ecosystems and supply chains. Steps taken by multiple languages to institute MFA requirements for package maintainers, to use but one example, result in substantial positive impacts. These simple, relatively low-cost actions cover the basics that have long been missing in the mission to secure supply chains. But that brings us to a fundamental issue yet to be addressed: whose job is it to make supply chains more secure and resilient?

I Am Not Your Open Source Supply Chain

One of the better essays on this subject was written by Thomas Depierre titled “I Am Not a Supplier“. While the title is a bit cheeky and “clickbait-y” (I mean, you are a supplier, whether you like it or not) he does make a very pertinent – and often overlooked – point: developers who decide to release code have absolutely no relationship with commercial users or technology vendors, especially if they offer no commercial support of that software. As Depierre notes, the software is provided “as is” with no warranty.

Which brings us back to the fundamental question: if not the maintainers, whose responsibility is open source supply chains?

The 10% Rule

I would propose the following solution: If you depend on open source software, you have an obligation to contribute to its sustainability. That means if you sell any product that uses open source software, and if your enterprise depends on the use of open source software, then you have signed on to maintain that software. This is the missing link. If you use, you’re responsible. In all, I would suggest replacing 10% of your engineering spend with upstream open source maintenance, and I’ll show how it won’t break the budget. There are a number of ways to do this in a sustainable way that leads to higher productivity and better software:

• Hire a maintainer for software you depend on – this is a brute force method, but it would be valuable for a particularly critical piece of software
• Fund projects dedicated to open source sustainability. There are a number of them, many run out of larger software foundations, eg. The Linux Foundation, the ASF, Eclipse, the Python Software Foundation, and others.
• Pay technology vendors who responsibly contribute to upstream projects. If your vendors don’t seem to support the upstream sources for their software, you may want to rethink your procurement strategies
• Add a sustainability clause to your Software Bills of Materials (SBOM) requirements. Similar to the bullet above, if you start requiring your vendors to disclose their SBOMs, add a requirement that they contribute to the sustainability of the projects they build into their products.

There is, of course, still a need to coordinate and maximize the impact. Every critical piece of software infrastructure should be accounted for on a sustainability metric. Ideally, software foundations will step up as the coordinators, and I see some progress through the Alpha and Omega project. It doesn’t quite reach the scale needed, but it is a step in the right direction.

If you work for a company that uses a lot of open source software (and chances are that you do) you may want to start asking questions about whether your employers are doing their part. If you do the job well of sustaining open source software and hardening your supply chains, you can spend a lot less on “security” software and services that generate reports that show thousands of problems. By coordinating with communities and ecosystems at large, you can help solve the problem at the source and stop paying ambulance chasers that capitalize on the fear. That’s why spending 10% of your IT budget on open source sustainability will be budget neutral for the first 2 years and deliver cost savings beyond that. Additionally, your developers will learn how to maintain open source software and collaborate upstream, yielding qualitative benefits in the form of greater technology innovation.