# Sustainability & Governance

> The heaviest category of the inspect.software health index (24%) — bus factor, responsiveness, organizational stewardship, and package upkeep.


**Sustainability & Governance** asks whether a project will survive its
people. Most open-source risk is not technical: it is a lone maintainer
burning out, an issue tracker going quiet, a package abandoned on its
registry while the repository still looks alive. This category measures the
structures that make a project durable.

It is the **heaviest category — 24% of the overall health index** — a
deliberate statement that continuity risk outweighs any single technical
signal.

## Metrics in this category

| Metric | Weight in category | Weight in overall |
| ------ | ------------------ | ----------------- |
| [Maintainer resilience](/wiki/maintainer-resilience) | 30% | 7.2% |
| [Responsiveness](/wiki/responsiveness) | 25% | 6.0% |
| [Stewardship](/wiki/stewardship) | 25% | 6.0% |
| [Package maintenance](/wiki/package-maintenance) | 20% | 4.8% |

[Maintainer resilience](/wiki/maintainer-resilience) measures the bus factor
and contributor concentration. [Responsiveness](/wiki/responsiveness) reads
how issues and pull requests are actually handled.
[Stewardship](/wiki/stewardship) examines who stands behind the repository —
organization or personal account, verified domain, track record.
[Package maintenance](/wiki/package-maintenance) checks that the published
package is current and not deprecated, because registry upkeep is distinct
from GitHub activity.

## Reading the category value

- This category is where **organization backing** influences the index: an
  organization signals shared, accountable stewardship that can outlive any
  single person. The lift is deliberate, documented, and auditable — see
  [stewardship](/wiki/stewardship).
- A strong [Vitality](/wiki/vitality) with weak Sustainability describes a
  productive project one departure away from stalling — the classic
  single-maintainer profile.
- Metrics with no observable data (no issues yet, no published package) are
  excluded and renormalized, never counted as zero.

## Improving Sustainability & Governance

- Grow the maintainer circle: review rights and merge rights for more than
  one person move the bus factor — the single heaviest component.
- Keep the issue tracker decided: triage, close, or merge; unresolved volume
  reads as risk.
- Move flagship projects from personal accounts to an organization, and
  verify the organization's domain.
- Keep registry releases current and never leave a deprecated latest version
  standing without a successor.

Related: [organization assessment](/wiki/organization-assessment) ·
[the health index](/wiki/health-index)