Open source, the thing that drives the world, the thing Harvard says has an economic value of 8.8 trillion dollars (also a big number). Most of it is one person. And I can promise you not one of those single person projects have the proper amount of resources they need. If you want to talk about possible risks to your supply chain, a single maintainer that’s grossly underpaid and overworked. That’s the risk. The country they are from is irrelevant.
↫ Josh Bressers
If the massive corporations that exploit the open source world for massive personal profit don’t want to contribute back, perhaps it’s time we start making them.
I envision an European Economic Area-wide “open source contribution tax”, levied against any technology corporation operating within the European Economic Area, whether they actually make use of open source code or not, not entirely unlike how insurance works – you pay into it even if you don’t make any claims. Such tax could be based on revenue, number of users, or any combination thereof or other factors. The revenue from this open source contribution tax is put into an EEA-wide fund and redistributed to EEA-based open source maintainers in the form of a monetary subsidy.
Such types of taxes and money redistribution frameworks already exist in virtually every country for a whole wide variety of purposes and in a wide variety of forms, both in non-commercial and commercial settings. While it may seem complicated at first, it really isn’t. The most difficult aspect is definitely figuring out who, exactly, would be eligible to receive the subsidy and how much, but that, too, is a question both governments and commercial entities answer every single day. No, it will never be perfect, and some people will receive a subsidy who shouldn’t, and some who should receive it will not, but if that’s a valid reason not to implement a tax like this, no tax or insurance should be implemented.
The benefits are legion. Of course, there is the primary benefit of alleviating the thousands of open source maintainers who form the backbone of pretty much out entire digital infrastructure, which in and of itself should be reason enough. On top of that, it would also strengthen the open source world – on which, I wish to reiterate, our entire digital infrastructure is built – against the kind of infiltration we saw with XZ Utils. And to put another top on top of that, it would cement Europe, or the EEA more specifically, as the hub for open source development, innovation, and leadership, and would surely attract countless open source maintainers to relocate to Europe. In other words, it would serve the grander European ambition to become less dependent on the criminal behaviour US tech giants and the erratic behaviour of the US government.
We can either wait indefinitely for those who exploit the free labour of open source maintainers to contribute, or we make them.
Wat ? Another tax ?
What will be funded with ? Stupid projects ? Who will decide which project will be relevant ? Will double funding be avoided (*nux Foundation + EU tax) ?
Open source, by its own principle, is already “funded” on peoples’ benevolent time to develop on these projects. If no one is interested into developing/updating/maintaining such projects, then why would the “EU tax” would waste tax payers’ money on it ?
If maintainers are now paid, it’s no more a “benevolent” task and some unskilled and uninterested people might jump in to “develop/update/maintain” stupid projects just to get some funding.
But not https://xkcd.com/2347/
Beware of the false motivation of some “coders”. Pirate Software is rampaging around.
The author has a tendency to favor state overreach, often calling for regulations on stuff that the market itself regulates through supply and demand.
Ah yes, the technology industry… Poster child for the “market” “regulating” “itself”. So many choices, so much competition, free from monopolies, free from dominance abuse, the cream rising to the top. A bastion of neoclassical economics, no doubt about it!
The linked strip was at the time an accurate depiction of the situation around NTP.
Calling this a market failure is completely misrepresenting the issue: non-monetized project with widespread use in critical infrastructure and no particular backing when problems arise.
Work to make sure this sort of problem is more easily discoverable and addressable is good, how best to address it is debatable. Having a government group cover the gap of finding and addressing these issues has its’ own huge set of potential pitfalls, but it’s not like private industry has had a great track record so far.
How many governments having switched their offices to run OpenOffice instead of MS Office have backed the project with funding ?
You know what they say about people becoming more “right wing” the older they get. It begins to feel like that a little bit when I see some of these “ideas”. I can think of few ideas for the use of taxpayer money that are worse.
If folks don’t want people to exploit their labour for profit without compensation, then they shouldn’t contribute to open source software. They should write proprietary software, or work for a company that will pay them for their labour. No one is being forced to write open source software against their will and for no payment. Therefore there is no need to force anyone to compensate them.
if open source contributors feel so strongly about this, they should develop a new license that forbids commercial use to force companies to license (and pay for the software). Maybe call it the “Creative Commons Non-Commercial License”!
Sarcasm aside, I don’t think a gun was held to any open-source developer’s head to force them to contribute to open source code, and therefore no gun needs to be held to taxpayers (or commercial entities) to force them to pay for something folks willingly license for free (as in freedom) use.
mkone,
You are right, this has always been a weakness of FOSS licenses. On the one hand companies that use FOSS without contributing anything are ruining the spirit of FOSS, but on the other they are doing what the license explicitly says is ok to do. While it is very unfair that these corporations get the wealth while much poorer contributors put in much of the work…it seems like the license needs to do some of the lifting.
I’m not sure if the imbalance that is so evident today was deeply considered when these licenses were thought up.
People aren’t forced to contribute, but in many instances they’re doing the work for themselves and contributing it back, which is the right thing to do in the spirit of FOSS. However unless they rewrite everything from scratch many actually are being forced to redistribute their own changes under the GPL, for example. They don’t have the right to change the license. I guess we can debate how big a problem that is, but I don’t know that it can be fixed without a huge duplication of effort on an unprecedented scale to have an opportunity to copyright it under a new license.
There are huge mission critical FOSS projects, like linux, where replacing the GPL2 doesn’t seem feasible to me. Hypothetically if one could, what should the license look like? I don’t know the answer.
The problem is that “commercial use” is a very hazy concept. That’s why a lot of people avoid the non-commercial Creative Commons license. In many jurisdictions, it’s not even clearly settled precedent whether putting ads on your personal blog to pay the hosting bill counts as commercial use.
To be perfectly honest, that’s also why, as a hobbyist, I used to be a bit of a hypocrite and would produce GPL2 for anything I expected to be able to relicense but lean toward consuming MIT/BSD in the dependencies I used… because if I get a contract to make something, it’s just less bother to know I can reach for the same tools I’m already used to without having to think about the complexities of fancier licenses like the LGPL, GPL, etc… let alone ones that have any kind of monetary compensation that scales with what I do with it.
(eg. That’s one reason why, even for a hobby game that I don’t anticipate ever reaching the threshold, if Godot weren’t around, I’d start making my own game engine with the Rust SDL2 bindings before I reached for Unity or Unreal.)
These days, since it’s the Rust ecosystem convention, I just go direct to producing MIT/Apache2 rather than having to decide on a project-by-project basis whether to allow contributions at the cost of having to keep track of what I still hold the authority to relicense to permissive if necessary.
…and for the record, part of the complexity of LGPL and GPL is that, as far as I’m aware, it’s not settled precedent what “linking” means for languages like Python or JavaScript with no compilation phase and no .dll/.so/.dylib files.
ssokolow,
This also limits a lot of organizations from even using those open source projects as a client on their systems.
“Hey, IT, can we use this nice SSH client?”
“What is the license?”
“I think AGPL”
“Sorry, we can’t do that. Please use something from the approved list, or find an MIT/BSD versioned alternative”
“But it has some quite nice features”
“Okay, do you want to implement them on PuTTY? We can approve a side-project”
They would use a closed, proprietary one before GPL3/AGPL, in some cases even GPL2.
*nod* GCC vs. LLVM is another example of that.
GCC leaned hard on the GPL and refused the original offer to make LLVM part of it because they were so determined to not provide any kind of back door for proprietary plugins… so Apple did an end-run around that and poured support into making LLVM a viable replacement.
It’s essentially the mirror image of how you see people turning to torrents or Linux or whatever as companies tighten the monetization screws or similar to how PulseAudio and systemd and Flatpak see so much uptake, because they emerged as “We’re tired of arguing with you about what is a legitimate need. We’re just going to put in the work to route around you entirely”.
Too much application of hard power and not enough of soft power and you find people deciding that it’s better value to just bypass you entirely.
ssokolow,
True. I remember those times, thanks for the reminder.
GCC was truly against any kind of reuse of their code base. So much so, they were actively hostile to any kind of modularization.
Today almost all IDEs use LLVMs language services. They basically squandered their biggest advantage.
We pay taxes for things we personally don’t use all the time. This is no different. Just as our physical infrastucture – roads, bridges, whatever, paid for by taxes – is crucial to our economy, so is our digital infrastructure. It needs to be supported all the same.
Well, you get “Tax” wrong in my opinion because taxes must not be allocated to any particular objective. When you raise an Open Source Tax, it will be spent for social welfare and pensions or defense.. Same as Environmental Taxes are spent. Not a dime will actually flow into OS when a tax is collected. So your only achievement was feeding more money into consultants, lawyers and bureaucrats.
Andreas Reichel,
I agree with you that bureaucrats can’t be trusted to use taxes appropriately. But I do think an open source mandate is appropriate for government spending. When governments spend billions on recurring proprietary software licenses every year, it’s the public who are being ripped off. Switching to FOSS instead of proprietary software makes a lot of sense. We’re literally the ones paying for it, we should be entitled to the software we paid for.
Corporate lobbyists will do anything to stop it, but the FOSS model is almost ideal when it comes to spending public dollars on software.
Alfman,
Do you mean using open source software for government owned or sponsored computing?
In an ideal world that would be nice. However in our practical reality, wouldn’t that leave out a lot of perfectly good choices?
(And if you mean just purpose built custom ones, yes, there is a stronger argument there)
It’s not even bureaucrats fault: taxes can not be designated to a particular objective, but become only part of general public spending. Otherwise it would be a duty.
Of course we agree on this as often and I made similar comments below and before. Especially Europe should massively realign its IT strategy:
– OS mandate for all government and parastatals
– special OS funding/investment initiatives by the Development Banks (EIB and KFW)
– tax deductions for entities publishing and/or maintaining and/or funding OS
– exemptions from certain regulatory requirements (e.g. DORIS)
In my opinion its not even about royalties but about the strategic value. I publish both closed and open source and in general my OS has much better design and quality. OS at least has the chance to get reviewed and used by many user with different use cases, when 4 eyes always see more than just two.
The fact that EU is still spending billion of FX on royalties from abroad is as stupid as making themselves dependent on Russian or American Oil/Gas only.
The reason the EU spends so much money buying software from abroad is precisely because they over-regulate these industries (in general) to the point that European companies find it hard to become competitive. It would be typical for European politicians to then decide that to fix this mess of their own making, then now need to tax someone (or fine someone).
And no, the public is not getting ripped off because European governments spend money on Microsft and the like. Governments only buy or license software because it enables them to deliver the services they need to for their citizens. If Governments believed that FOSS software is good enough and cheaper, then they have a duty to use it. However, the fact that they don’t rather suggests that in their judgement, the paid for software is better suited for their needs.
mkone,
This true today. And this was true 28 years ago, when I first tested the “EU Internet”.
And the unfortunate side of this is, they don’t even realize the self harm caused by these organizations. So far, EU has been reactive in almost all cases, and almost never pro-active. And in a fast paced competitive world, that means they are hindering competition.
(There is a reason they are surpassed by not only United States, and China, but soon India and other upcoming power centers as well)
mkone,
It would easily be good enough AND cheaper if they had invested in FOSS instead of proprietary. Proprietary software only makes sense short term (similar to renting equipment being cheaper short term, but overwhelmingly bad long term). The math leans more in favor of FOSS the more governments get on board. It would collectively save taxpayers heaps of money. Alas, even if FOSS is financially beneficial to tax payers, the politics are much more complicated.
Corporations are more likely to have lobbyists buying influence. And politicians are notoriously cavalier about making bad deals long term as long as most of the bad consequences take place on someone else’s watch. Also it’s not a strait matter of what’s best for taxpayers because the reality is that politicians who make enemies with powerful corporate interests will find their careers ruined by smear campaigns, often secretly funded (not sure if this happens in non-US countries?)
https://campaignlegal.org/update/super-pacs-are-continuing-hide-secret-money-wealthy-special-interests-heres-how
I think these are big impediments even if FOSS would save taxpayers money.
Yes, we pay taxes for things that we personally don’t use.
But we generally pay taxes to ensure that goods and services are produced that would otherwise not be. I am not seeing a compelling case that there is an under-served market that critically requires open source software, or any software in general. That the developers are not paid when they could choose not work for free is not compelling enough to compel others to pay them.
And I dislike this idea of trying to hide taxes by forcing corporations to pay them. Eventually, the customers of those companies pay those taxes.
Your examples are items that are traditionally provided by governments.
Governments make money by taxing people and other legal entities.
Individuals and corporations make money by selling their products or services.
Also, the items on your list are used by everyone in the society, except, perhaps, the hardcore preppers and off-the-gridders.
And, yes, governments regularly take money from one entity and give (some of it) to other entities. That does not mean it is right.
> You know what they say about people becoming more “right wing” the older they get.
Considering current developments, it appears to simply be a case of “becoming more right wing the richer they get”
As for the rest of your post, no, just no.
If you want to create software that you believe makes the world a better place, FLOSS is the way to go, working for a corporation will not result in that, unless you happen to join that particular CEO’s religion. 10-15 years ago, I wouldn’t have said this, giving Google as an example. But now…
There’s a reason NLNet grants exist.
> No one is being forced to write open source software against their will and for no payment.
Sense of duty to your fellow humans is a big motivator.
Another big failure was the BSD/MIT and other permissive licenses, which allowed corporations to appropriate commons, without returning anything. Somehow the FLOSS movement deluded itself into believing that its licensing being corporation-friendly was a good thing. The only place where that works is when the project is so big there is a single source of truth (LLVM/Clang – and even then Apple ships different from upstream) .
Finally, if you had to pay for ALL the software contained in the smartphone at purchase time, yikes. Put a price on implementing GPU drivers, a rendering stack, a TCP stack, NTP, SSL, a browser, a mail client… For every different phone. You’re getting magical abilities for free.
There’s a reason the iphones all have the same hw.
Good Morning Thom,
as usually, your intentions are good while we won’t agree on the execution: Another tax is really the last thing EU needs especially in this case when it can’t be collected effectively or efficiently. A lot of carriers are leaving EU already settling for places where the government focuses more on its core functions instead of overreaching in daily lives. I also share the opinion, that people turn more right-wing when they become too frustrated with left wing. Until someone starts crying, as my grand ma said.
What really would help and was way more efficient: Strict OS requirements for any software of the states and public sectors, including parastals. This would not only value up OS but also keep the Tech Corps at bay and improve security and interoperability for the public. And its a realistic scenario (in the sense of doable).
Andreas Reichel,
This is true.
When EU started implementing their cookie mandate, for example, many smaller websites just chose to block EU addresses instead of taking on the additional cost and potential risk for fines.
(And to be fair that mandate did not work as it has now become an “Accept All” vs highly hidden and convoluted “Please fax us a copy of your request to opt-out” dual choice)
All of these have unintended consequences.
Examples? The hundred or so local newspapers I heard of are all owned by the same American newspaper conglomerate.
Last I heard, they’re in the process of working to roll out a revision to require that “Reject all/Necessary cookies only” be as visible and easy to select as “Accept All”.
There are plenty.
As you said newspapers…. something like 1/3 of all of them
https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-sites-are-still-unavailable-in-europe-two-months-after-gdpr-took-effect/
Also small but important sites like Instapaper:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/23/17387146/instapaper-gdpr-europe-access-shut-down-privacy-changes (they came back a few months later)
The only problem is not the cost of compliance (which now has become a new industry, with services like: https://www.cookiebot.com/)… but also potential for crippling fines.
Anyway… you can easily find more examples if you wanted to.
Yes, only 7 years later… and still not done either…
Btw, “what could possibly go wrong with enforcing more user privacy?”
Yes, it sounds awesome. But if you really think about it, it will make the already bad experience worse.
The reason all websites switched to personalized ads was the previous option was very bad. (I do have some numbers I cannot share, but basically no small to medium sized website will survive as-is if they switch to non-personalized, generic ads)
What will happen?
Anybody’s guess. But the palette of options are not good:
1. They can cut back operations
2. They can increase the number of ads to make up for the lost revenue
3. They can require logins to have tracking cookies for analytics and personalization
4. They can enact paywalls
5. They can move to other methods like “fingerprinting” or buying profiles from the open market. (Which are not subject to these regulations)
6. Least intrusive: patreon, merch, and asking for donations…
and so on…
The saying is “be careful for what you wish for, you might actually get it”
sukru,
The thing is the old untracked advertising models for old media did work and were in fact very profitable before the web. Tracing genuinely wasn’t prerequisite to advertisers spending money, which paid for both entertainment and journalism. Today we’re tracked up the wazoo, professional journalism is nearly extinct, and frankly ads have gone from mild annoyances to infuriatingly intrusive on top of paying ever more for content.
Old media died, but the reason was NOT because they lacked tracking, advertisers were just coming along for the ride following the eyeballs. It was normal people moving to online websites and streaming services driving this technological change, advertiser interests were not a causal factor, but rather reactionary. So while being able to track users individually on this new medium interested the advertisers, it was not an economic factor critical to the success of the web, which would have been fine without personal tracking.
Obviously personal tracking won once advertisers learned they could do it, but not I’m not convinced that the absence of trackers would be all that terrible for individuals & consumers and I think it may be a case of being better off without it – not that I believe this will actually happen.
Alfman,
I wish we could go back to the old web, but the genie is already out of the bottle.
The public research varies, but for example mckinsey suggest up to 40% increased revenue for personalization:
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying
Because, depending on how you do it, you can give your visitors (or customers) much better experience.
It is the difference between recommending a different digital camera to someone who just bought one, versus recommending them with useful accessories, lenses, and storage cards to complete their set.
(Over simplifying, but in general more data = better experience)
Anyway,
But… there won’t be absence of trackers. They will be implemented in different and potentially much more invasive ways.
Nobody will leave money on the table.
…and ad-blocking was a niche thing until targeted advertising came on the scene, despite it being MORE valuable to user experience in the days of dial-up Internet.
People intuitively recognize that advertising is supposed to operate on biological signalling theory… it’s a peacock’s tail or a deer’s antlers… a sign that you’re not a fly-by-night operation because you can afford the outlay. When random people recognized they could theoretically be the only person seeing a specific ad, advertising lost all value for them.
As Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful lays out, we’re in a web advertising death spiral where you have to target to keep up, but targeting is slowly killing the medium. (Similar to e-mail marketing, where, because lobbying pre-empted regulation, people are coming to see ads as inherently scammy, like they do with “cold calling” e-mails.)
…sort of like how many people (myself included) already see a company paying to sponsor a YouTube channel as a sign that whatever they’re selling is scammy and, if you like the concept, you should go find whatever they’re making an overpriced, inferior competitor to.
…or how I hear of so many people who not only see ads as signifiers of scamminess, but who don’t trust any review that doesn’t show up in a site:reddit.com search
It’s banner blindness all over again. People adapt to attention-stealing things they consider to have no value to them and other things get caught in the crossfire.
sukru,
That article is biased to the point where it seems to be written for people who are already sold on it’s conclusions, which makes the source suspect. Even so, I don’t think it contradicts the point. Consider…
It’s not surprising at all that a company that wants to pay for advertising could have a preference for personally tracking users (only 40%? I would have thought more). But it doesn’t follow these companies paying for tracked advertising would drop out in a world where tracking wasn’t an option, it’s very likely they would still be in the market for advertising.
I think advertisers love to tell themselves this, but all advertiser’s ads are crap, They wouldn’t have to pay for them if people wanted to see them. You know how often we’re watching youtube and other videos with intrusive ads that nobody wants to watch and get muted until they can be skipped? It’s the exact same behavior that we had with cable tv ads that weren’t personalized. While I am not very representative, I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t genuinely hate how bad ^personalized^ ads have become.
Yes, I agree I don’t think anyone will fix it, although I was partly responding to “be careful for what you wish for, you might actually get it”…I think people who wish advertisers didn’t track them would still stick to this preference if there were no trackers.
Alfman,
Found this today. There are many, many more examples for “be careful for what you wish for, you might actually get it”
Unfortunately, there is not much public information about this. But at least consider this: companies actually have access to direct results from ad metrics, and choose to continue pay into this system.
“Online ad spending over time”:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/242552/digital-advertising-spending-in-the-us/
ssokolow,
It is true that there would of course be disadvantages.
However (1) the article’s methodology is wrong, they measure dollars spent not the ROI or ROAS (“return on ad spent”). And that is considerably higher for targeted ones vs generic, and even higher for personalized vs targeted.
(2) once again, companies will find (even more intrusive) ways to target ads, they are not going to give up the additional benefit.
True. I do wish more people would follow my approach of maintaining a brand blacklist for any company/product names which I became aware of in an annoying way. (i.e. which managed to get through my ad-blocking HOSTS file, uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and SponsorBlock.)
(I also bump companies down on my priority list if I see those annoying “Subscribe to our newsletter!” in-page popups. Most recently, I started buying non-sale items from the local BMR despite slightly higher prices instead of the local Home Hardware because the latter chain’s website started displaying those popups… I still buy sale items from Home Hardware because BMR doesn’t send out those mass-mailed sale flyers printed on newsprint while Home Hardware does.)
sukru,
Yes, I know they pay into this system with personalized data tracking because it’s there and because they can. But it doesn’t follow that they would stop paying way for advertising if anonymous advertising was the only option. It should be noted that companies might say they’ll do one thing, and then go do another because they still feel the need to advertise. It’s overwhemingly likely that most advertisers would shift to untracked advertising if that were the only option.
Edit: I’ll concede that in many cases “advertisers” are often the real customers, where as user/viewers are just a means to attract advertisers, and business favors advertiser interests above the viewers.
The linked page is behind a paywall for me. Statista’s gimmick is fooling people into thinking the data is open so that other viewers who follow the links end up at statistica’s paywall. I regret sharing their links once I realized they were doing this with links I was sharing. Anyway, it’s not your fault, but the data isn’t publically accessible to me.
But Thom,
They already do that.
I really wish you or the original author did some cursory research before posting this. (And not even going into all the counter-intuitive damage that comes with more taxes and regulation, including “pulling up the ladder behind”)
Anyway…
Major companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel directly or indirectly fund and contribute to many open source projects, and actually host or even start many of them.
They are not stupid after all. They know their own infrastructure depends on availability, reliability and security of many open source projects.
That is why there are many “commons” organizations. For instance, the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF) often partners with tech companies to fund security audits for critical open-source projects.
Open Source Security Foundation is another such project formed as a successor to “Core Infrastructure Initiative”
https://ostif.org/
They get funding from hundreds of organizations and employ thousands of security experts that work on highly critical open source infrastructure projects.
And this is just tip of the iceberg.
Again, let’s not forget entirely funded initiatives like Linux Foundation, PyTorch, Kubernetes, vscode, Godot, React, Ansible, Node.js, Apache, … and funding to critical companies like Hugging Face, Mozilla and others.
In fact most critical open source projects immensely benefit from this patronage than the other way around.
Is there room for improvement?
Of course.
For example it could be identifying more critical projects early on, and also employing educators on security and code quality to help individuals to improve themselves.
But not governments dictating which projects to use or support.
If they spend the money in the same way the Mozilla Foundation does, no thanks.
Yeah, that one. Only to get absorbed by Oracle then.
Does it? I’ll go out on a limb and claim that shifting some of the existing tech subsidies could do the job admirably.
Starting with that idiotic €20 billion “ai” one that was announced recently.
People like Thom are good at advocating spending other people’s money. If they could steal it from you themselves, they would.
Thom is right in a sense that some FOSS projects are the base of our IT infrastructure, something we take for granted, yet are quite in jeopardy because it fits a purpose by de facto having no commercial alternative (the FOSS is enough and no one will pay for a secured/verified/maintained one). The WWW was mostly funded on US tax payers’ money in the beginning (ARPA, …) and continued from there.
But the problem remain, there is no global consensus to create a board of direction to drive IT in a commonly accepted direction. Google, as a private entity, is trying to steer it its way with QUIC if no one is resisting enough. Thom also just posted other stories about how some private companies with world dominance can favor their technologies to lock in consumers at a global scale.
Microsoft (Windows with OEM contracts) or Apple (AppStore lock-in) are recent example.
At least the EU commission is fighting this nonsense and request those monopolies to “relax” a bit (Browser carousel in Windows, tier stores in iPhones, etc).
Kochise,
Again, those large companies are already paying a significant portion of open source development. They might be competing against each other. But they are not stupid to let critical infrastructure they use go to disrepair.
Which “large companies” are “paying a significant portion of open source development” ? Through the Linux foundation ? Giving back open source GPU drivers ? Have you relatable examples ?
Don’t forget that some companies pay in services. (eg. infrastructure)
For example, waiting on the CI runs was becoming a major bottleneck on iterating the Rust toolchain before Microsoft’s Azure team donated a bunch of capacity, and Google runs things like OSS Fuzz.
I certainly wouldn’t want to have to pay to run something as resource-intensive as fuzzing on rented capacity like colo.
(Your question about open source GPU drivers reminded me of when Google bought and then open-sourced GraphicsFuzz.)
Above all what was said here… is someone really suggest that our taxes should go to open software that will be then used for free by the Chinese to build products competing with ours, and by the Russians to start another war etc etc? I understand that this is the key element of open software – everyone can use it for many purposes. But should we then finance it from public money? It’s a suicide really.
I think the argument is “People are going to write open-source software either way… but if you don’t fund them, then they’ll do it around their day-job until they burn out”… and programmer burn-out is a big problem.
ssokolow,
From a cursory search
Sorry, I cannot format tables here (still no TT or PRE tags).
Thsese are weekly contributions. Not employees, but number of employees directly assigned to open source roles in these organizations are counted in thousands, if not tens of thousands
Basically… they already do that.
Do you really want an American-style “Only things that executives anticipate making a return on get funded” system?
I don’t know about you but, as a Canadian, I quite like how many of my indie games show the badges for our various federal and provincial arts and culture grants in their credits scrolls.
People and corporations that use software or software components to make money ‘should’ pay for them. It is the ‘right thing to do’ in many (most?) cases.
Conversely, if people or corporations write software or software components and release them to the public with a license that does not require the user to pay, they should not expect payment.
Nothing here requires legislation or additional taxes.
The core premise is false. “One maintainer” just means one gate keeper. And it is not work it is control. They have losts of devs. I bet most FOSS project founders want to keep control.
I really like this idea, there are so many companies out there that use FOSS projects without giving a cent