Why cURL’s $10,000 Grant Still Falls Short of Its Global Reach

Microsoft FOSS Grant for cURL

In July 2022, Daniel Stenberg, the Swedish creator of cURL, was notified that cURL had won the Microsoft Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Foundation award, which provides a $10,000 grant paid over ten months.

cURL’s Technical Scope and Ubiquity

cURL offers a library ( libcurl) and a command‑line tool that support almost every data‑transfer protocol, including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, IMAP, Kerberos, LDAP, MQTT, POP3, RTSP, SCP, SMTP, SMB, and many others. Because of this breadth, it is pre‑installed on major operating systems (Linux, Windows, iOS, Android, macOS) and on gaming consoles (Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation 5), media players (Roku, Apple TV), and virtually all IoT devices such as smart kitchen appliances, medical equipment, printers, smartwatches, and cars.

History and Development Effort

Stenberg began the project in 1996 to automate exchange‑rate downloads, initially using an open‑source tool called httpget. He later became its maintainer, adding Gopher and FTP support. In March 1998, he released the first 2,200‑line version of cURL, which saw only about 300 downloads in its first two years.

Undeterred, he continued polishing cURL in his spare time, eventually spending 15,000 hours (about 1.78 hours per day) over 28 years. By 2021, cURL had 197 releases, supported 26 protocols, fixed 6,787 bugs, grown to 170,000 lines of code, and attracted 2,300 contributors.

Funding Model and Economic Gap

cURL’s monthly donation income on OpenCollective is calculated as follows:

56 × $5 = $280

3 × $25 = $75

72 × $100 = $7,200

1 × $500 = $500

1 × $1,000 = $1,000

Total ≈ $9,055 per month, which is modest for an open‑source project used on over 10 billion devices. Even if each device contributed $0.01, the maintainer would be a billionaire, highlighting the mismatch between usage and revenue.

cURL also incurs expenses for infrastructure, security bounties, developer conferences, and equipment (e.g., a laptop replacement after eight years of use).

Motivation Beyond Money

Stenberg explains that after two decades of daily work, he sometimes feels fatigue, but the greatest reward is knowing his code powers the ubiquitous internet.

Typical Paths for Open‑Source Sustainability

Based on the discussion, open‑source projects often follow one of four routes:

Maintain a small, starred project that enhances a résumé.

Provide a highly specialized library that solves a niche problem (e.g., cURL, log4j, OpenSSL) with limited direct income.

Scale a project that meets a massive demand, create a commercial edition, and potentially sell the company or go public (e.g., Nginx, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Docker).

Become so essential that large tech firms establish foundations or funds to support its continued development (e.g., Linux).

These models illustrate the financial challenges faced by critical infrastructure tools like cURL.