Developers don’t get into open-source software for the profits. While it may not lead to fortunes, open source software is critical to much of the technology we use every day—from the core of Android to popular languages like Python and PHP to business tools like Hubspot’s CRM and the Trello project management service.
New Relic has been a key contributor to open standards, open instrumentation, and open collaboration, but today we’re taking it a step further by launching GitHub Sponsors for companies.
New Relic partners on GitHub Sponsors for companies
Last year, GitHub launched GitHub Sponsors, a program in which individuals can invest in 
open source developers through recurring monthly payments directly in Github. When a developer or open source project opts into the program, GitHub adds a “Sponsor me” button to their repositories. This allows open source projects to highlight their funding models, whether that’s through individual developer contributions or through services like Patreon, Tidelift, Ko-fi, or Open Collective.
Through this program, millions of dollars have been contributed to open source projects. Many developers are making six figures using GitHub Sponsors already, and even more are able to envision supporting their communities as their full-time job.
We’re proud to partner with GitHub to launch GitHub Sponsors for companies at GitHub Universe 2020, allowing entire companies and organizations—not just individuals—to invest in the open source developers and projects that we depend on, directly within GitHub. We’re so excited to be joined by a stellar line-up of companies who have already committed to invest in open source projects through GitHub Sponsors.
Our commitment to open source
The world runs on software, and we need a more perfect internet as we passionately pursue a better world. No one company can do this alone. We’re all on this journey together, and at New Relic, we believe that it begins with open source.
We have contributed to many open source projects, including:
We contribute to the OpenTelemetry project by defining specifications, implementing parts of the specifications in language SDKs, reviewing pull requests from other contributors, and serving as a maintainer in the OpenTelemetry subprojects.
We serve as pull request approvers and contributors to this project and actively contribute to the specification and discussions to evolve the specification.
OpenTelemetry is part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF); we’re a Silver Member of the CNCF.
W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group
The W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group defines common standards for propagating traces and context between tracing tools.
AdoptOpenJDK is the community and code behind the build farm that produces high quality, free OpenJDK (Java) binaries.
We’re a Silver Sponsor of AdoptOpenJDK and participate in technical work related to the project. We also use AdoptOpenJDK binaries extensively in our own JVM-based services and recommend them as the preferred upgrade path from Oracle's binaries.
Our investment in open source developers is one more step along our journey to lift up developer communities and make sure that open source remains valuable and sustainable for everyone in software. We'd love to have you along for the ride, so please stop into GitHub Universe and join us. We're looking forward to seeing you there.
The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of New Relic. Any solutions offered by the author are environment-specific and not part of the commercial solutions or support offered by New Relic. Please join us exclusively at the Explorers Hub (discuss.newrelic.com) for questions and support related to this blog post. This blog may contain links to content on third-party sites. By providing such links, New Relic does not adopt, guarantee, approve or endorse the information, views or products available on such sites.
