My personal opinion is that money and open source should mix more. In the sense that more open source development should be done by salaried engineers, and especially engineers whose salary is paid by the users of the software. Instead of donating money, companies should donate engineer hours. Shift the ownership from cathedralic upstreams to the user bazaars. The whole idea that projects would have semi-independent funding for development feels to me somewhat wrong.
I'll admit this is idealistic view and not very actionable.
My concern is less about actionability and more about practicality.
Money is fungible, so it's easier for the company to donate. Providing in-kind donations is more expensive for them because then they would need to hire people who have the right skills to contribute to that product, regardless of whether they have any independent need for that skill set.
Money is fungible, so it's also easier for the project to work with. Need to shift some resources toward server hosting? Can't do that if your incoming donations are engineer-hours instead of money. Need to hire a lawyer because some patent troll is on your case? Too bad, no law firms are donating lawyer-hours this year. Need someone with skill in writing compilers? Too bad, the incoming donations are all time from front-end developers.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, for what it's worth, was not talking about funding models. It was talking about whether the general public is allowed to see development branches in real time and submit their own changes, or only gets to see source tarballs for official releases. Nowadays there are very few true "cathedral" projects that generally don't accept incoming patch submissions from the public. The most noteworthy one I can think of offhand is SQLite.
Yes and no. Yes, Linux kernel is good example of project where development is done by employees of various organizations. I'd argue that is big part why Linux kernel community is as healthy as it is. But also no, because so much of Linux development is driven by HW vendors (instead of direct users), and that is somewhat special situation. Although there is also good chunk of work done by organizations that directly use Linux, I don't want to dismiss that by any means.
Open Source licenses are probably too easy to adopt thoughtlessly, without the creator deeply thinking about what goals they want long-term, what achieving those goals is worth to them in actual dollars. The creator should at minimum know that they’re donating x hours a week of work valued at y dollars, and be able to look in the mirror and say “I’m fine with that”, rather than put in years of work only to find out they feel taken advantage of.
Earlier in the 1990s, it was kind of an open secret that Open Source was largely a movement by and for academics. Most the headline open source projects were launched and maintained by people who could rely on an academic or research institution's patronage to put food on their table. RMS's own ideas arguably grew out of his frustration at restrictions on academic freedom - in the form of restrictions on access to computing resources - on DARPA-funded projects that he saw while working at MIT, and concerns about the lab becoming dependent on - and therefore partially controlled by - commercial software vendors.
Somewhat later we'd have large corporations like IBM contributing to FOSS projects, almost as a form of patronage. Linux wasn't their core product; Linux was just a way to help them sell their core products. Products like Amazon Coretto arguably fall under a similar model. It's not actually all that far from how academic projects get funded.
Where it gets tricky is when you've got companies whose core or only product is an open source application, and when you've got individuals who are sinking a lot of free time into being maintainers instead of being able to do it on the clock.
I take this as an indication that Open Source has always been shaped by money. The movement's core ideals and structure are inextricably linked to a certain way that people make money. And therefore not necessarily so well-adapted to the needs of people whose relationship to capitalism works differently.
yes agree and ... there are civilized constructs of exchanges with strangers, that serve both sides in win-win. Those seeking rent, or profit from artificial scarcity, are not (directly) served in these exchanges. Over time, government, at its core a creature of taxation and enforcement, slides down the slope of making rules to the liking of rent-seekers. Open capital markets abhor "free" exchanges as wasted profits, and find ways to lie, cheat and steal their way into the exchange (buying Github and washing all the source licences with CoPilot for example).
How is the latest funding of Poolside related to RMS ? bonus essay question.
> The reality is that we humans are messy and unpredictable. We don't quite know how we will behave until we have been throw into a particular situation. Open Source walks a very fine line, and anyone claiming to have all the answers probably doesn't. I certainly don't.
> Is it a wise to mix Open Source and money? Maybe not. Yet I also believe it's something that is just a reality we need to navigate.
Part of the answer, IMO, is that F/OSS surfs the delta between the individual and the group. Projects are an individual or small team effort that, per some hand-wavy statistical distribution, have some potential for traction.
The group needs stability and predictability. Hence all the pesky laws and economics that individuals generally disdain.
> https://opensourcepledge.com/
> Can individuals join?
> While we've had companies-of-one join, we don't yet have a route to individual membership. We're discussing whether to add this in issue #21. Feel free to join the conversation.
I have been an FSF member for years now, because if one wants output, it helps to provide input.
> the solution we are focusing on is providing direct payments to maintainers
Cutting out the middle-man is excellent. One could pine for more stability and predictability, but that implies some governance.
THOUGHT: Maybe, as the greyhair population increases, trusted Devs who are inclined can move toward a governance council, and offer oversight of a resource pool (implying a non-Dev staff for the beancounting chores). This is one of those Herb Sutter ideas where the "difference between theory and practice may be greater in practice than in theory". But the basic idea is to leverage the wisdom of those who've Been There but don't intend to mash keys until the destructor call.
While I agree that direct payments to maintainers are great, they almost always amount to a laughable salary / pennies for years of professional work.
I would never start a serious open source project — I contribute for fun but trying to make a living from it is painful and the community yells at you bc you bring money into OSS.
This seems like those bums who run out and smear up your windshield at stop lights who then want to be paid.
If you want to get paid for software development, start a business and sell to customers, or get a job. The number of "developer in residence" positions is approximately zero. If you want to get paid for scratching whatever itch you have, good luck.
My personal opinion is that money and open source should mix more. In the sense that more open source development should be done by salaried engineers, and especially engineers whose salary is paid by the users of the software. Instead of donating money, companies should donate engineer hours. Shift the ownership from cathedralic upstreams to the user bazaars. The whole idea that projects would have semi-independent funding for development feels to me somewhat wrong.
I'll admit this is idealistic view and not very actionable.
My concern is less about actionability and more about practicality.
Money is fungible, so it's easier for the company to donate. Providing in-kind donations is more expensive for them because then they would need to hire people who have the right skills to contribute to that product, regardless of whether they have any independent need for that skill set.
Money is fungible, so it's also easier for the project to work with. Need to shift some resources toward server hosting? Can't do that if your incoming donations are engineer-hours instead of money. Need to hire a lawyer because some patent troll is on your case? Too bad, no law firms are donating lawyer-hours this year. Need someone with skill in writing compilers? Too bad, the incoming donations are all time from front-end developers.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, for what it's worth, was not talking about funding models. It was talking about whether the general public is allowed to see development branches in real time and submit their own changes, or only gets to see source tarballs for official releases. Nowadays there are very few true "cathedral" projects that generally don't accept incoming patch submissions from the public. The most noteworthy one I can think of offhand is SQLite.
This is at partially true for some projects isn't it? The Linux kernel is mostly paid work funded by individuals' employers.
Yes and no. Yes, Linux kernel is good example of project where development is done by employees of various organizations. I'd argue that is big part why Linux kernel community is as healthy as it is. But also no, because so much of Linux development is driven by HW vendors (instead of direct users), and that is somewhat special situation. Although there is also good chunk of work done by organizations that directly use Linux, I don't want to dismiss that by any means.
Open Source licenses are probably too easy to adopt thoughtlessly, without the creator deeply thinking about what goals they want long-term, what achieving those goals is worth to them in actual dollars. The creator should at minimum know that they’re donating x hours a week of work valued at y dollars, and be able to look in the mirror and say “I’m fine with that”, rather than put in years of work only to find out they feel taken advantage of.
Earlier in the 1990s, it was kind of an open secret that Open Source was largely a movement by and for academics. Most the headline open source projects were launched and maintained by people who could rely on an academic or research institution's patronage to put food on their table. RMS's own ideas arguably grew out of his frustration at restrictions on academic freedom - in the form of restrictions on access to computing resources - on DARPA-funded projects that he saw while working at MIT, and concerns about the lab becoming dependent on - and therefore partially controlled by - commercial software vendors.
Somewhat later we'd have large corporations like IBM contributing to FOSS projects, almost as a form of patronage. Linux wasn't their core product; Linux was just a way to help them sell their core products. Products like Amazon Coretto arguably fall under a similar model. It's not actually all that far from how academic projects get funded.
Where it gets tricky is when you've got companies whose core or only product is an open source application, and when you've got individuals who are sinking a lot of free time into being maintainers instead of being able to do it on the clock.
I take this as an indication that Open Source has always been shaped by money. The movement's core ideals and structure are inextricably linked to a certain way that people make money. And therefore not necessarily so well-adapted to the needs of people whose relationship to capitalism works differently.
yes agree and ... there are civilized constructs of exchanges with strangers, that serve both sides in win-win. Those seeking rent, or profit from artificial scarcity, are not (directly) served in these exchanges. Over time, government, at its core a creature of taxation and enforcement, slides down the slope of making rules to the liking of rent-seekers. Open capital markets abhor "free" exchanges as wasted profits, and find ways to lie, cheat and steal their way into the exchange (buying Github and washing all the source licences with CoPilot for example).
How is the latest funding of Poolside related to RMS ? bonus essay question.
> The reality is that we humans are messy and unpredictable. We don't quite know how we will behave until we have been throw into a particular situation. Open Source walks a very fine line, and anyone claiming to have all the answers probably doesn't. I certainly don't.
> Is it a wise to mix Open Source and money? Maybe not. Yet I also believe it's something that is just a reality we need to navigate.
Part of the answer, IMO, is that F/OSS surfs the delta between the individual and the group. Projects are an individual or small team effort that, per some hand-wavy statistical distribution, have some potential for traction.
The group needs stability and predictability. Hence all the pesky laws and economics that individuals generally disdain.
> https://opensourcepledge.com/ > Can individuals join? > While we've had companies-of-one join, we don't yet have a route to individual membership. We're discussing whether to add this in issue #21. Feel free to join the conversation.
I have been an FSF member for years now, because if one wants output, it helps to provide input.
> the solution we are focusing on is providing direct payments to maintainers
Cutting out the middle-man is excellent. One could pine for more stability and predictability, but that implies some governance.
THOUGHT: Maybe, as the greyhair population increases, trusted Devs who are inclined can move toward a governance council, and offer oversight of a resource pool (implying a non-Dev staff for the beancounting chores). This is one of those Herb Sutter ideas where the "difference between theory and practice may be greater in practice than in theory". But the basic idea is to leverage the wisdom of those who've Been There but don't intend to mash keys until the destructor call.
While I agree that direct payments to maintainers are great, they almost always amount to a laughable salary / pennies for years of professional work.
I would never start a serious open source project — I contribute for fun but trying to make a living from it is painful and the community yells at you bc you bring money into OSS.
Even if you start a non serious project that can evolve and become something that all the sudden takes more time and emotional burden than expected.
Isn't this the whole purpose of "open source"?
That's what makes it different from free software...
This seems like those bums who run out and smear up your windshield at stop lights who then want to be paid.
If you want to get paid for software development, start a business and sell to customers, or get a job. The number of "developer in residence" positions is approximately zero. If you want to get paid for scratching whatever itch you have, good luck.