The package registries the whole industry runs on are asking big tech to pay. openssf estimates…
the package registries the whole industry runs on are asking big tech to pay. openssf estimates public registries will serve over 10 trillion downloads in 2026, more than a billion an hour, and is piloting enterprise tiers and service agreements.
the question is who keeps it free for everyone else.
Context
OpenSSF's blog post of May 6, 2026 says public package registries will serve over 10 trillion open source package downloads in 2026, more than one billion downloads per hour. OpenSSF's blog post of September 16, 2026 describes an enterprise commitment from organizations that build, ship and operate software on public package registries, with signatories including GitHub, Google, IBM, Kusari, Microsoft, Red Hat, the Rust Foundation and Sonatype, the list being partly read. They commit to support free access for individuals and small organizations and to support registries exploring usage-based funding, without prescribing specific pricing, terms or tiers. The post says download volumes are growing 30 to 50 percent a year and states 1.8 million malicious packages so far in 2026.
The 10 trillion figure is OpenSSF's estimate from the May 6 post and not a September one. The September 16 post is consumers committing to support registries, and no OpenSSF-run pilot of enterprise tiers or service agreements is named in it, so OpenSSF is piloting enterprise tiers is not supported as written. The post mentions registry fees including in pilot or experiments without naming one. Registries choose their own models. The question is who keeps it free for everyone else is the author's take.
Watch next
- Any named registry pilot and the full signatory list.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 22 September 2026 at 16:52 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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