Op-ed: why we still pay Ringgit for OSS at UTHM Forge

a friend in the UTHM academic community pinged me last week and asked, point blank: "is paying OSS maintainers in Ringgit performative? you know USD goes further."

the question is fair. RM 1,200 a month is roughly USD 270. by global OSS rates, that is on the low end. the friend is right.

here is why we still do it anyway

because the alternative is not "pay more in USD". the alternative is "do not pay at all."

most OSS maintainers in UTHM Forge have day jobs, or freelance contracts, or are still in school. asking them to invoice a US sponsor, navigate Wise, and report the income to LHDN is a 6-hour onboarding per maintainer. we tried it. we got 3 maintainers through the funnel in 6 months.

with RM-denominated bounties, we got 24 maintainers through in 4 weeks. the friction difference is not 10x. it is 100x.

the math, honestly

• ·USD bounty pool: USD 12k/year. minus 8% Wise fees. minus 6 hours of maintainer time per onboarding. minus tax. effective rate: 0.6 maintainers.
• ·RM bounty pool: RM 50k/year (~USD 11k). zero fees. zero onboarding time. zero tax for most maintainers (under the RM 34k annual threshold for hobby income). effective rate: 4.8 maintainers.

we pay the same amount. we reach 8x the maintainers. that is not performative. that is the math.

what we are not doing

we are not pretending RM 1,200 a month is "a fair wage for OSS." it is not. it is a token. the goal is to keep the door open and the maintainers shipping, not to replace their day job.

if you are a UTHM corporate sponsor who wants to put USD 10k/year into this pool, email partnerships@uthm-forge.dev. we will convert it and report exactly where it went.