Rust Foundation Signs Joint Statement on Open Source Infrastructure Stewardship
Today, the Rust Foundation joined other open source infrastructure stewards in publishing a Joint Statement on Sustainable Stewardship.
In this post, we’d like to explain why we chose to sign this statement, why it matters for Rust, and how we can move forward as a community.
Why We’re Having This Conversation
Every piece of Rust software, from personal projects to large-scale production systems, depends on common infrastructure. For Rust, that means crates.io for package distribution, docs.rs for documentation hosting, and the broader ecosystem of registries, CI services, and content delivery networks that keep everything running smoothly.
Thanks to our incredible community, crates.io has grown exponentially – now serving billions of downloads per month and supporting millions of developers worldwide. This growth is a testament to Rust’s vibrant ecosystem and expanding adoption across industries.
Rust’s infrastructure, though, relies on bandwidth, compute power, storage, staff and volunteer time. The expectations around open source software have also evolved substantially, with governments and enterprises demanding reliability, security and speed.
The joint statement highlights that these expectations come with real (and rising) costs, and that most of this is currently borne by a small group of organizations and individuals. Meanwhile, many large-scale users, including commercial enterprises that generate enormous value from Rust, use crates.io without contributing back to its sustainability.
With the exponential increase in usage we are experiencing, we need to find a more sustainable way to run our services that is fair for the developers who are contributing to the Rust ecosystem, and the enterprise companies that are building the tools and systems so many of us rely on today.
The Path Forward
The Rust Foundation exists to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Rust programming language and ecosystem. We feel that it’s right that we take a proactive approach to this topic.
The joint statement represents the beginning of an important industry-wide conversation about how critical open source infrastructure can thrive sustainably. It outlines several practical paths that the Rust Foundation supports exploring:
- Commercial and institutional partnerships that help fund infrastructure in proportion to usage or in exchange for strategic benefits.
- Tiered access models that maintain openness for general and individual use while providing scaled performance or reliability options for high-volume consumers.
- Value-added capabilities that commercial entities might find valuable, such as usage statistics.
We’re at the very beginning of this process. Like the other signatories of this statement, we’re starting a conversation, not announcing changes. crates.io will continue to operate as normal for the foreseeable future.
Rust has always been about collaboration – developers across the world working together to build something safer, faster, and more reliable. But collaboration doesn’t stop at writing code. It also includes sustaining the systems we all depend on.
We invite everyone who benefits from Rust, whether as a hobbyist, a researcher, a small business or a global enterprise, to be part of this effort. Over the coming 6-12 months, we’ll be:
- Hosting community forums and discussions,
- Consulting with project maintainers and ecosystem leaders,
- Working closely with other package registries to learn from different approaches,
- Researching solutions that maintain Rust’s open and accessible nature.
These steps will inform our approach to ensure long-term sustainability.
Nothing will change without extensive community input. We believe the Rust community’s voice must be central to any decisions about crates.io, and we look forward to hearing your ideas.
Acknowledging Our Supporters
We want to recognize the organizations that already contribute significantly to crates.io’s sustainability, including our generous supporters like Fastly, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Huawei and AWS. Their contributions – whether financial, infrastructure, or in-kind services – demonstrate what shared stewardship can look like. We’re grateful for their ongoing commitment to the Rust ecosystem.
Q&A
Will this affect my CI/CD pipelines or automated builds?
No immediate changes are planned. Any future considerations around automated usage will be developed with extensive community input.
What about open source projects that use automated tools?
Access to crates.io will not change in the immediate future. We’re committed to ensuring that legitimate open source development isn’t impacted.
How will you distinguish between individual and commercial use?
We haven’t made any determinations yet – this is exactly the kind of question we’ll be exploring with the community in the coming months.
When will we know more about specific plans?
We expect this consultation process to unfold over the next 6-12 months. We’ll provide regular updates as our thinking develops.
The Rust Foundation is committed to fostering the growth and sustainability of the Rust ecosystem as a responsible steward. Learn more about our work at rustfoundation.org.
