Open Source x MOJAM: Supporting the IT Community Is Part of Our Code
The be PRO & be BRO approach is part of MOJAM’s DNA not only when it comes to how we work inside the team. One of our goals is to give back to the IT community, whose work helps us build and grow truly game-changing products. Since November 2024, MOJAM has been consistently investing in supporting open-source projects that we actively use in development. This allows us to improve our products faster, maintain high quality, and bring our ideas to life more effectively.
Below, MOJAM’s Back-End Team Lead Pavel Bezdverniy and NodeJS Team Lead Konstantin Gobelyak share insights into how we boost open-source projects and why we believe this kind of support is a win-win for everyone in the IT ecosystem.
Basics Sync: Everything You Need to Know About Open-Source Projects. From A to Z 📝
Open Source is a software development model based on publicly available source code. Any developer can use it, modify it, share it, or simply explore it for their own needs. It’s a way of sharing code with the world: authors publish libraries, tools, or even full-scale solutions so others can build on top of them in their own products.
But not all code you find online is truly “open.” Everything depends on the license. It defines whether a project can be freely used, modified, and distributed, or whether there are limitations.
“The license is chosen by the project creator at the moment of publication. For example, by adding a LICENSE.md file to the root of the repository. The author applies a specific license template depending on how they want their code to be used and developed further. The license is then published alongside the source code, and violating it may lead to legal risks — especially for large companies,” — Kostya, NodeJS Team Lead.
Not all open-source licenses are the same. Each comes with its own rules, and they’re worth checking before you use the code. Here are the most common formats:
To quickly understand the specifics of any license, TLDR Legal is a great place to start.
How We Boost Open-Source Projects ⚡️
MOJAM launched the financial support initiative for open-source products in November 2024. The initiative started with an idea from our Chief Technical Office.
“First, we defined a monthly budget we were ready to allocate to open source — $3,000 per month. We split it between our IT departments, $1,000 each. Then team leads got the freedom to choose which projects to support, based on real needs and the tools they use in their daily work”, — Pasha, Back-End Team Lead.
Over time, this initiative evolved into a systematic process. Today, MOJAM supports 6 open-source projects every month and occasionally makes larger one-off donations.
As of November 2025, the total amount of support for open-source projects has reached $60,000.
We deliberately don’t focus on giant projects. Many of them are too big to fail and already backed by large corporations, so our contributions wouldn’t make a real impact there. Instead, the MOJAM team supports small and mid-sized projects; the ones we actively rely on in our code every day.
We make a monthly donation of $1000 to:
And also $500 to:
The Real Value of Open Source in Practice 🤔
In reality, even Google’s internal “homegrown solutions” are built on top of open-source software in one way or another. Creating an IT product that completely avoids open source, whether in development or operations, would actually require extra effort. Even highly isolated and closed systems like BIOS are very likely compiled using an open-source product.
Building everything from scratch is economically inefficient. Open source helps standardize processes, speed up development, and keep the focus on the product instead of reinventing solid solutions that already exist. It’s also beneficial from a team perspective: the market already has specialists experienced with these technologies, so there’s no need to train people from zero.
“We never face a choice that’s strictly between our own code and open source. There’s always the option to use proprietary solutions as a service or subscription. But in the long run, open source is safer because you can always make a copy. With proprietary products, the vendor may shut them down or radically change them, which becomes a major risk. That said, we still use high-quality closed-source products where it makes sense,” — Kostya, NodeJS Team Lead.
A Convenient Template
Open source is like a ready-made template that helps you reach your goals faster.
This is especially critical for startups: reducing time to market is a top priority, and open source helps keep the pace.
When you don’t write code from scratch but use a ready-made library, the work comes down to integration, saving both time and resources. The same can be said about proprietary solutions, but the key advantage of open source is that it’s often already adapted to common infrastructures and handles routine tasks like billing, PDF generation, or email notifications out of the box. As a result, teams can focus on product value rather than minor technical problems.
Company Brand Development
It’s also important to remember that investing in open-source projects strengthens the employer brand. Many developers highly value companies that actively support open source. For example, MOJAM participates in the same projects and sponsorship initiatives as major tech players: we are Principal Sponsors of NestJS, alongside Microsoft.
This approach helps attract strong candidates and retain talented teammates, showing that the company genuinely cares about the community and is committed to high-quality code.
Why Not Write Everything In-House?
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“In short, it’s not cost-effective. In many cases, it’s easier and cheaper to support existing open-source projects than to build everything from scratch. For example, donating $5,000 per month to five key open-source projects may cost less than developing similar solutions internally. In-house development requires a dedicated team, ongoing management, well-established processes, and constant work on motivation. The value of open source lies in the fact that bad code simply doesn’t survive — no one uses it. It’s a kind of natural selection, where a project lives on only if it’s truly useful,”— Pasha, Back-End Team Lead.
Some companies choose the inner-source approach. It’s an open-source–like model within the company. The code isn’t publicly available, but the processes and principles follow a similar logic. At first, the project is used only internally, and over time, it may evolve into a product for a wider audience. However, from an economic standpoint, this approach makes sense mainly for companies with thousands of developers. That said, both open source and inner source can significantly boost developer motivation:
“When you’re a project owner and know that people outside your team will work with your code, you naturally want to lower the entry barrier. There’s motivation to simplify the code, reduce technical debt, design a clean architecture, and write thorough documentation. You need to make sure new features are scalable and don’t break existing logic. In the end, many developers simply feel embarrassed to show bad code, so they end up writing good code,” — Kostya, NodeJS Team Lead.
A new type of open-source projects has emerged recently: AI models and datasets. Even Google engineers admitted in 2023 that their lead over open-source projects is closing surprisingly fast. The secret is that breakthrough ideas are more likely to emerge in open-source collaborations than within closed inner-source systems. That’s why large companies increasingly open their code to the community in search of fresh insights.
There Are Different Levels of Open-Source Projects
Many of the most well-known technologies that are now essential to the IT industry are open source:
However, all these examples are “unicorns” — unique cases where open-source products have turned into mass solutions used by billions of people. Much more often, open-source releases come in various scales and levels of popularity:
Important nuance: projects at different “niche” levels can solve the same problems using different methods or at different scales. The common goal of many open-source products is to simplify routine tasks: data storage, handling web requests, or automating specific computations.
Typical Origin Story of an Open-Source Product
Free open-source products usually don’t grow as fast as commercial ones, but they are always backed by people motivated not just by profit, but by genuine interest and the desire to create great tools for everyone. Often it starts as a hobby or a “side hustle” idea that eventually grows into something bigger. Looking at the origin stories of the projects we support:
And, of course, there are giants like TypeScript, whose code is maintained by entire teams at Google and Microsoft. These companies intentionally allocate people and resources to develop tools for the community and strengthen the ecosystem that the tech world relies on.
Financial Side: How Can an Open-Source Project Stay Afloat?
Financial support is a vulnerable point for many open-source initiatives. Most authors don’t ask for anything: you can use their code for free, and often there’s no simple way to “say thanks with a dollar.”
Some leave links for donations or add small features to help support the authors. The main platform for open-source is GitHub, which already has built-in monetization options: you can set up regular sponsorships or make a one-time donation directly to the developer. Sometimes entire campaigns are created around a project to raise funds and continue its development. For example, the authors of the open-source drawing app Krita launched the Accelerate Development crowdfunding campaign to add 24 new features. Other times, authors burn out, honestly share that they can’t keep up, and receive community support. For instance, in 2025, the project lead of Asahi Linux stepped down due to this reason. Foundations also sometimes step in, taking projects under their wing and helping them grow. Mozilla Foundation, The Linux Foundation, Core Infrastructure Initiative, and many other organizations regularly support external open-source projects.
Some products start generating revenue themselves: they release a free base version but offer additional features for donations. A good example is Bitwarden, which publishes its source code for free on GitHub while offering paid premium features.
But it’s important to remember — open-source doesn’t survive on big sums alone. Small donations from IT community members matter a lot, too. Many people support projects with just $1–5, and that is extremely valuable.
“It’s hard to feel how exactly your donation impacted the project right off the bat. It’s work for the long term, because the open-source team never knows how long you plan to support them. And that’s okay, good even, as it helps them see reality clearly and understand that survival depends on having many contributors. That’s why we don’t just donate, say, $10,000 to a single project. This way, the authors aren’t dependent on one source and can perceive the market more realistically,” — Pasha, Back-End Team Lead.
Sharing is Caring: How to Contribute to Open-Source
There’s another way to boost open-source: share knowledge and improve code. Contributions don’t have to be only financial: you can help other developers improve code, document, optimize, and test.
Our insight: often maintainers care about this even more than money. It gives them the feeling that they’re not alone. After all, most open-source projects run on the enthusiasm of a few people.
Still, knowledge sharing is not always easy in practice. You need free time in your schedule, a dedicated team, or even an open-source rotation. The challenge is similar to technical debt: everyone knows it’s important, but it often gets postponed because the business wants new solutions ASAP.
Why Donating to Open-Source is Your Shield 🛡️
Of course, there’s a flip side: the risk that a project might be suddenly abandoned or closed. Then you either have to take its development into your own hands or find workarounds. That’s why at MOJAM, we support projects that we actually use.
There’s a simple truth in open-source: for a project to stay useful, it needs constant development. Otherwise, it becomes outdated: library versions change, dependencies shift, and operating systems evolve. Code that no one maintains quickly loses value and can even harm a project. Supporting the people who keep open-source alive is an investment in your own efficiency on the market, even if it indirectly helps competitors.
“In the world, there’s probably no company that makes money without using open-source. So I believe every business should contribute. But many companies ask: why pay if it’s free anyway? The point is awareness: if you don’t support the authors, projects won’t develop and may disappear — which will ultimately cost the company more because migration becomes necessary,” — Pasha, Back-End Team Lead.
Donating to an open-source project is about:
At MOJAM, we believe supporting talent should be the norm. Only together can we accelerate processes and make leaps in IT development.
Be BRO, Be PRO & Support Open Source. If these values resonate with you, let’s move the IT community and tech world forward as a team. Let’s Add More Jam Together! 🚀
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