Open Source Reality Check

Your dependencies
have a price tag

Every npm package you install comes with an invisible maintenance cost.
Security patches. Version updates. CVE investigations. Breaking changes.
It's time to budget for it.

40 hours
Average annual maintenance per team
23 CVEs
Found in typical project audit
46 mins
Per developer per week
Install Now See Demo
$ npm start -- analyze
// Your current reality
Total Dependencies: 127
Annual Maintenance: 156 hours/year
Risk Distribution:
CRITICAL: 3
HIGH: 12
MEDIUM: 45
LOW: 67
// That's 4 weeks of work
// NOT building features
01

The Concept

Set an OSS Maintenance Budget

Open source packages aren't free. They're a trade-off. You gain velocity today, but commit to ongoing maintenance forever. Every dependency in your package.json is a recurring subscription—paid in engineering hours.

Most teams don't measure this cost. They add packages freely, then wonder why feature velocity decreases over time. The maintenance burden grows silently, consuming more hours each quarter.

💡
Our philosophy: Every team should establish an explicit OSS maintenance budget. For example: "Our team of 5 developers allocates 40 hours per year to OSS maintenance."
Sample Budget
Team Size 5 developers
Annual Budget 40 hours
Per Developer 8 hours/year
Per Week ~10 minutes
Time for Features 99.8%
02

The Hidden Cost

Security Patches

Every CVE requires investigation. Is it exploitable? Are we affected? Can we upgrade safely? Time spent: 2-4 hours per vulnerability.

Version Updates

Staying current means regular upgrades. Testing. Fixing breaking changes. Updating code that relied on old APIs. Compounding across 100+ packages.

Technical Lag

The longer you wait, the harder it gets. Skip updates for 6 months? Now you're dealing with major version jumps and accumulated breaking changes.

Transitive Dependencies

Install one package, get 50 more. You're now responsible for maintaining packages you never explicitly chose. The tree grows exponentially.

More Packages
=
More Maintenance
=
Less Time for Features
"
This is NOT about technical debt.
This is NOT about code quality.
This is NOT about overall maintenance cost.
This is about one specific slice: the time required to keep your OSS dependencies secure and up-to-date.
A narrow, measurable cost that compounds over time
03

The Tool

Measure. Budget. Control.

OSS Maintenance Cost Analyser queries vulnerability databases and package metadata to calculate the estimated annual maintenance hours for each dependency. It combines historical CVE frequency, maintenance health, complexity, and technical lag into a single composite score.

01

Historical CVE Analysis

Track how many vulnerabilities each package has had over time. Packages with frequent CVEs will cost you more in the long run.

Weight: 50%
02

Maintenance Health

Is the package actively maintained? When was the last release? Abandoned packages become security liabilities.

Weight: 10%
03

Dependency Complexity

More dependencies mean more attack surface and more update cycles. Simpler packages cost less to maintain.

Weight: 15%
04

Technical Lag

How outdated is your current version? The further behind you fall, the more expensive it becomes to catch up.

Weight: 15%

See it in action

Example output from analyzing a typical project

terminal
$ npm start -- analyze
📊 PROJECT SUMMARY: my-app
Overall Score: 68/100
Total Annual Maintenance: ~45 hours
Total Known CVEs: 23
Risk Distribution:
LOW: 12 packages
MEDIUM: 8 packages
HIGH: 2 packages
⚠️ Highest Risk Packages:
moment: 38 - CRITICAL
lodash: 42 - HIGH

Check before you install

The best time to control maintenance cost is before you add the package.
Make informed decisions at selection time, not cleanup time.

1

Evaluate candidates

Before choosing between libraries, check their maintenance cost. 

# Comparing date libraries
$ oss-maintainance-cost check moment
Score: 38/100 - CRITICAL
Est. Maintenance: ~12 hours/year

$ oss-maintainance-cost check date-fns
Score: 87/100 - LOW
Est. Maintenance: ~3 hours/year

# Clear winner: date-fns saves you 9 hours/year
2

Check if you're over budget

See if adding this package will push you past your maintenance budget.

Current maintenance cost: 45 hours/year
Your budget: 50 hours/year
Remaining capacity: 5 hours/year
New package cost: 8 hours/year
Decision: ⚠️ Over budget by 3 hours
3

Make the trade-off

Decide if the value justifies the cost. Your options:

  • Remove unused packages to make room
  • Choose a lower-cost alternative with similar features
  • Build it yourself if the feature is simple
  • Increase your budget and accept less feature velocity
💡
Prevention beats cleanup: It's far easier to avoid adding high-cost packages than to remove them later when they're deeply integrated into your codebase.

Start budgeting your dependencies

# Install globally
npm install -g oss-maintainance-cost-analyser

# Or run directly
npx oss-maintainance-cost-analyser analyze
# Analyze your project
oss-maintainance-cost analyze

# Check a single package
oss-maintainance-cost check lodash

# Save results
oss-maintainance-cost analyze --output report.json
# GitHub Actions example
- name: Check OSS budget
  run: |
    npx oss-maintainance-cost-analyser analyze
  # Fails if critical/high risk packages detected
View on GitHub npm Package