Shared technology enables companies to build, scale and innovate without building every capability in house. This can save on short term costs, but the work of maintaining shared foundations still needs to be funded and done somewhere in the ecosystem.
As these foundations become more central to business operations, the resources that support them may lag behind. If that happens, organisations can end up with costs and risks that were not apparent when they adopted the technology.
What Is Stewardship Debt?
Enterprises increasingly rely on technology they do not own or maintain themselves. Open-source libraries, public package registries, shared development tools and community-maintained projects underpin systems that businesses depend on every day.
Stewardship debt describes the potential costs and risks that arise when organisations depend on shared technology more heavily than the resources available to maintain, secure and develop it can support.
Access to these resources can make software development faster and more economical. Organisations can build on existing capabilities rather than develop everything internally, while benefiting from improvements made by a wider community.
Those costs do not disappear simply because individual users do not pay for maintenance directly.
If the people and infrastructure sustaining a shared technology cannot keep pace with demand, some of the resulting work and costs may fall back on the organisations that depend on it.
That can mean building workarounds, carrying out extra security work, migrating at short notice or taking on engineering tasks that would otherwise be handled across the wider ecosystem.
Unlike conventional technical debt, which typically focuses on compromises made within technology an organisation develops or controls in-house, stewardship debt can accumulate outside the enterprise itself. An organisation may not have created the underlying problem, but it can still bear the consequences.
A technology dependency can be functioning correctly in the moment while the people and institutions responsible for maintaining it lack the ability or capacity to keep it secure, reliable and useful over time.
Stewardship debt isn't an established industry metric or accounting category but a proposed concept. It describes a possible gap between enterprise dependence on shared technology and the resources available to sustain it.
How Does Stewardship Debt Differ From Technical Debt?
Technical debt is the future cost of compromises in software design, architecture or implementation. A team may choose a shortcut or keep an outdated component because a better solution would take too much time or money.
These decisions can create extra work later, particularly when temporary fixes become part of critical systems. Stewardship debt starts outside the organisation, when the shared technology it relies on lacks the capacity or resources to keep pace with its role.
An enterprise may maintain its own systems responsibly while depending on a shared foundation that isn’t adequately supported for the level of use it receives.
This may reflect limited maintainer time, inconsistent funding, inadequate testing or insufficient capacity to meet growing technical and security demands.
An individual enterprise may have little control over these constraints, and using shared technology doesn’t automatically mean stewardship debt exists.
The distinction can be summarised in two concepts:
- Technical debt: Future costs caused by shortcuts or compromises in technology an organisation develops or controls.
- Stewardship debt: Potential future costs when shared technology lacks the resources needed to support the organisations that depend on it.
Stewardship debt can contribute to technical debt if the organisation responds to gaps in shared technology by creating workarounds, maintaining a private fork or delaying upgrades. They differ in the sources of pressure.
An enterprise can address its own technical debt through internal investment, but it cannot resolve wider funding or maintenance constraints simply by changing its own code.
What Does the Research Show About the Costs of Shared Technology?
Stewardship debt has not been formally measured. However, research on open-source use and contribution offers examples of costs organisations may face when shared software doesn't meet their needs.
In February 2026, the Linux Foundation published research on the benefits and costs associated with contributing to open-source software. Based on a survey of more than 500 IT leaders, it examined reported outcomes across different forms of engagement.
The research also identified costs associated with maintaining or adapting shared software to meet specific business requirements.
The Linux Foundation reported the following findings:
- 49 per cent of respondents said they develop internal workarounds for features or fixes not yet on open-source project roadmaps. These workarounds reportedly cost an average of $670,000 a year.
- Organisations reported spending an average of 5,160 labour hours maintaining private forks or duplicated code per release cycle, equivalent to a reported cost of $258,000.
- The research reported benefit-to-cost ratios of between two and five times for different forms of open-source contribution.
These findings do not show that passive consumption causes underfunded maintenance, or that the reported costs are necessarily examples of stewardship debt. They also do not mean that every private fork or workaround results from a lack of resources in the wider ecosystem.
Open-source projects have their own priorities, which may not align with every enterprise's requirements. Internal modifications can therefore be necessary and commercially justified, even when a project is well supported.
The findings do, however, illustrate how adapting shared software to meet business needs can create substantial additional work and cost.
A private fork may solve an immediate problem, for example, but the organisation must then maintain its changes, integrate relevant updates and manage the ongoing engineering effort.
The connection to stewardship debt depends on why those extra costs arise: they are relevant to this concept when gaps in the resources sustaining a shared foundation contribute to the burden.
The research doesn't measure stewardship debt directly, but it helps illustrate how the cost of using shared technology can extend beyond the initial savings when additional work becomes necessary.
Why Does Maintenance Capacity Matter To Enterprise Security?
A shared technology ecosystem depends on more than code quality. Maintainers need time, expertise and resources to review changes, investigate reports, test releases, operate infrastructure and respond to issues.
That work must also continue as dependencies, user expectations and operational demands change.
When a small number of people have limited capacity, even a well-designed component can become harder to maintain over time.
This doesn't mean small projects are inherently unsafe or that paid maintainers always produce more secure software. Project size and funding alone do not determine whether a dependency is trustworthy.
Security is one area where the consequences of insufficient capacity can become particularly visible.
When a weakness is disclosed, someone may need to investigate it, develop and test a fix, issue a patch and communicate with users. Each step takes time and coordination. If maintainers are already stretched, this work may take longer or compete with other essential tasks.
The same capacity constraints can delay routine maintenance, security improvements and the work needed to validate releases.
The concern isn't necessarily that a vulnerability already exists. It is that the resources available to respond to future issues may not match the organisation's level of dependence on the technology.
A dependency may pass security checks today, but that doesn't guarantee the people and infrastructure behind it will have enough capacity to respond effectively to tomorrow's issues.
This makes maintainer capacity a future security consideration, even when there is no immediate reason to classify the dependency as vulnerable.
Underfunded Shared Infrastructure Creates Risk
Open-source software isn't sustained by code alone. The surrounding infrastructure that distributes, validates and supports it also requires investment.
Public package registries, online services where developers can publish, find and download reusable software components, provide a useful example of shared technological infrastructure. They support commercial software development at scale by allowing organisations to access existing components without having to build and maintain their own distribution systems.
Registries such as npm, PyPI and Maven Central make these components accessible, helping to simplify development workflows and reduce the need for organisations to manage software distribution on their own.
Despite being easy to access, package registries still need ongoing investment in availability, performance, security and operational support.
In September 2026, the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) raised concerns that the current funding model for public package registries isn't sustainable. It called for funding models that better reflect enterprise reliance on these services and the resources needed to operate and maintain them.
The OpenSSF statement also pointed to registry operators' reliance on donated infrastructure credits and small teams, alongside growing download volumes and rising security and compliance expectations.
This provides an example of the kind of resource imbalance that stewardship debt is intended to describe: enterprises benefit from distribution infrastructure, while the resources supporting it may not grow at the same pace as demand.
The statement doesn't establish that all registries are under-resourced to the same degree, or that stewardship debt is a recognised or measurable industry category. It does highlight the need to consider whether the funding and capacity behind shared services can support growing demand.
If a registry lacks sufficient resources, organisations could eventually face reduced reliability, greater operational friction or delays in developing capabilities they need.
Similar pressures can affect other shared technologies when limited resources delay maintenance, testing, documentation or security fixes, leaving dependent organisations to fill the gaps themselves.
When Can Stewardship Debt Return To The Enterprise?
Stewardship debt becomes a business concern when a shared technology's limitations begin to affect an organisation's ability to rely on it. The effects may build gradually.
If maintainers cannot support the technology at the pace or scale users need, an organisation may have to take on work itself. Which can solve an immediate problem but add costs over time:
Private forks may create additional maintenance obligations
When maintainers lack the capacity to address a change or issue an organisation needs, the organisation may modify its own copy of the project. It must then maintain those changes and reconcile them with future releases.
Maintaining internal workarounds is expensive
If shared technology doesn’t provide the capacity or features that a business needs, teams can create temporary fixes. These can become permanent, adding code and processes that the organisation has to continue to support.
Security fixes may become more difficult
If an organisation cannot wait for a reliable update and the maintainer team cannot investigate and release a security fix quickly, it may need to apply additional testing, temporary controls or its own workaround until a fix can be applied.
Migration could become an unbudgeted cost
If a common technology can no longer be supported or changed and tailored for business needs, an organisation may have to migrate to an alternative sooner than expected. That can mean changes to connected systems, workflows and staff processes.
Possibility of duplication of engineering effort
When multiple organisations independently fill the same gaps they may duplicate engineering efforts. Where appropriate, sharing a fix with the project can reduce repeated effort across the ecosystem.
These outcomes do not prove that stewardship debt is present. They become relevant to the concept when insufficient resources supporting a shared foundation contribute to the extra work or cost.
The practical question is whether the organisation is having to compensate for gaps that reflect the shared technology's lack of maintenance or support capacity.
Why Should Enterprises Invest In Technology They Do Not Own?
Supporting shared technology doesn't mean treating every open-source project as a charity. Organisations must prioritise their products, security needs and budgets, and cannot support every project they use.
The business case is strongest when a shared foundation is important to an organisation's products or operations. If that foundation deteriorates, the organisation may have to spend more maintaining its own version, duplicating work or migrating to an alternative. Supporting the foundation may help reduce the likelihood or impact of those costs.
The appropriate form of support depends on the needs of the shared technology and the organisation's reliance on it. This could involve funding maintainers, contributing engineering time, testing changes, improving documentation or supporting shared infrastructure that the business depends on.
The OpenSSF's September 2026 statement on package registries makes a related point: funding models may need to reflect enterprise use while preserving free access for individual developers and smaller organisations.
The aim isn't to make all shared technology commercial or to require equal contributions from every user. It is to recognise that the long-term value businesses receive depends on resources being available to sustain critical foundations.
For enterprises, supporting a critical shared foundation can be a matter of commercial self-interest if it helps limit future maintenance costs, duplicated engineering or disruption.
Is Stewardship Debt An Unavoidable Cost Of Shared Technology?
The short answer is no. The use of open-source software or shared infrastructure doesn’t automatically create stewardship debt.
Some projects are well-maintained and adequately supported, while others are more operationally intensive or have fewer resources. The situation varies across technologies and over time.
Funding alone won’t solve every maintenance problem. Sustainable support also depends on technical expertise, governance, testing, collaboration and the time needed to review and integrate changes.
The concept is most relevant when an organisation materially depends on shared technology and the resources sustaining it aren’t keeping pace with demand. That gap can increase the risk of future costs, although it doesn't guarantee they will arise.
This is why technology leaders may need to look beyond acquisition costs, licensing terms and current performance to consider the health of the wider ecosystem. Stewardship debt describes this risk; it is not a universal score or an established formula.
Shared technology spreads the benefits of development across many users. But when its maintenance is underfunded, the costs do not disappear simply because responsibility lies elsewhere.
For more perspectives on the technology foundations businesses rely on, explore EM360Tech's coverage of enterprise infrastructure management.
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