Maintainer Month Returns with Events, Perks, and a Security Focus

Open source software underpins the modern software ecosystem, with the vast majority of companies relying on it. Yet the projects themselves depend on the sustained, often under-recognized effort of maintainers. GitHub’s fifth annual Maintainer Month kicks off in May to spotlight that work, offering a packed schedule of expert-led sessions, a new bundle of partner perks, and a hands-on security challenge for project maintainers.

Expert Sessions Tackle Licensing, Security, and the CRA

More than 25 events and livestreams are scheduled throughout the month, and they are open to anyone, whether or not they already consider themselves a maintainer. Two sessions stand out for addressing persistent pain points:

  • What maintainers need to know about open source licensing, SBOMs and security (May 6, 2025): Jeff Luszcz from GitHub’s Open Source Programs Office reviews the essentials of licensing, software bills of materials, and security in the current landscape.
  • The CRA and Open Source: What Maintainers Really Need to Know (May 27, 2025): A stream with the Eclipse Foundation’s Cyber Resilience Working Group covering practical resources and guidance for navigating the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act.

The 2025 Partner Pack

A new initiative this year, the Maintainer Month Partner Pack, bundles tools, discounts, and services from organizations supporting open source. Available to all maintainers, the current offers include:

  • Arachne Digital: Free tailored threat report with defensive steps
  • Boot.dev: One month of free premium backend development courses
  • CNCF: Discounts on cloud native training, including Kubernetes
  • DevCycle: A free year of the Developer plan
  • JSConf North America: Discounted event tickets
  • Linux Foundation Education: 25% off the full course catalog
  • Mockoon: A free Cloud account for faster API development and testing
  • Sentry: Access to its open source plan for monitoring and performance
  • TODO Group: 20% off the CODE certification for enterprise open source
  • Web Summit: Discounted tickets to Vancouver and Lisbon for OSS contributors

The partner list will grow through May. Some partners provide additional perks for members of GitHub’s private Maintainer Community, a vetted space for project maintainers to connect and share knowledge; maintainers can request to join via maintainers.github.com.

New Security Guidance and a Certification Challenge

To help maintainers bolster their projects’ defenses, GitHub has published a new guide on Security Best Practices for Your Project at opensource.guide. The guide offers practical, immediately actionable advice on:

  • Securing code as part of the development workflow
  • Preventing unwanted changes with protected branches
  • Establishing an intake mechanism for vulnerability reporting

For those seeking a more structured challenge, the Maintainer Month Security Challenge provides three hands-on GitHub security skills exercises. Completing them earns a voucher for the GitHub Advanced Security certification. The full schedule, partner pack details, and challenge sign-up are available at maintainermonth.github.com.