Mar 23, 2026
TL;DR: MapLibre is sun-setting the bounty program as originally conceived because it isn’t a sustainable way to incentivize contributions at our current scale. The Board and maintainers are working hard to identify what comes next. We will honor any existing bounty commitments.
Since our founding, MapLibre has asked sponsors to contribute to a development fund intended to incentivize new feature development; primarily through bounties. After running this program for several years, we’ve concluded it no longer serves our community well.
Effective March 31, 2026, we will no longer be offering bounties for development work. We will instead pursue roadmap and feature development goals through pathways more typical for open source software.
We are working toward a contributor recognition system that rewards regular, high-value contributions that sustain and strengthen our community. If you have questions or ideas, please reach out.
We are making this change because the system as it was designed fails on a structural level:
The Governing Board’s mission is to sustain and grow this project by recognizing those who invest their time and money in it. A bounty-based model may have seemed like a good idea at first, but at our current scale it creates more problems than it solves.
We would like to replace the bounty system with a contributor recognition system that rewards impact and community contribution. The Board and maintainers are actively working to define what this looks like, and we will share more details as they are finalized.
MapLibre exists because of its contributors across code, ecosystem integrations, and community work. That hasn’t changed. Our goal is a well-funded project that can pay the people who sustain it. That starts with sponsorship; if your company builds on MapLibre, please become a sponsor.
MapLibre remains a community-driven project. If you have feedback or ideas, we want to hear from you. This is an ongoing conversation, and we’re building the future together.
Q: What is the history of the bounty program?
MapLibre introduced our bounty program in 2022 to give back to contributors, encourage new participation, and create a lightweight reward system. Developers could sign up, comment on bounty-labeled issues, complete the work, and submit an invoice through OpenCollective. The process was bureaucratic by design, and at the time, we had no budget or runway. We are more established today, and want to align with the common practices of other open source organizations to ensure the sustainability and stability of the project.
Q: Is this part of a broader organizational change?
No. MapLibre remains a lean organization with a Governing Board made entirely of volunteers and four part-time staff members.
Our financial reports are public. We are currently operating at a loss. See our sponsor page if you want to help.
Q: What if I have an in-flight bounty?
Contact your maintainer. We will honor existing commitments.
Q: I maintain a MapLibre integration for another platform or framework. When can MapLibre financially support me?
Ecosystem maintainers — the volunteers who keep integrations like Flutter, React Native, Qt, and others working — extend MapLibre’s reach into developer communities our core team cannot serve directly. That work matters enormously to us, and to the users and companies downstream who depend on it.
We can’t pay you directly yet, but it’s a goal we’re working toward. In the meantime, we support ecosystem maintainers in concrete ways: we’re exploring grant-based and commercial funding for larger efforts, we can help with hardware or testing resources if you’re blocked by a missing device or platform, and we can cover reasonable conference travel costs for presenting your work. Reach out to a board member to start the conversation.