

Ask HN: The company where I work for doesn't  care about giving back to FOSS - grover_hartmann

I was talking with a co-worker today and he said the company where we work for doesn&#x27;t have any incentive to contribute back to FOSS yet the entire stack at this company is built on top of Linux and FOSS.<p>He mentioned he has tons of stuff he&#x27;d like to contribute but he is not allowed to by our employer.<p>This is sad and in my opinion companies like this are bad users of FOSS.<p>I asked my coworker why they don&#x27;t feel like contributing and he said the company doesn&#x27;t have any monetary gains if they contribute, even though they realize contributing to FOSS helps with reputation, provided the contributions are useful to the community.<p>Companies like this are really depressing to work for, they only take take take while giving nothing back, pay a shitty salary to people and get rich rich rich, sigh.
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caseysoftware
So?

If you want to contribute, you can do it on your own time (review your
contract first) and/or make the business case to your team and get signoff
from the relevant people.

The business case normally isn't too hard: show how your team benefits from
the contributions. "Reputation" is hard to manage but recruiting is easy. From
a technical perspective, it just takes showing that some of the bugs/features
you've handled in the system are easier maintained as part of the core system
instead of an internal fork. I've done the same while working for software
companies, non-tech companies that used software, and even the US federal
government.

Finally, if you're working in software development and getting a "shitty
salary" do something else. There are probably a dozen other companies hiring
within a mile of where you work right now. Stop blaming others and go after
what you want.

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Mz
This is a personal issue. If it bothers you this much, change jobs. Or start
your own company and have it comply with whatever ideals you ascribe to.
Though, frankly, it sounds like your real beef is your _shitty salary_ and
this is just an excuse to tar them as evil in every way for not paying you
enough. If the truth is you wouldn't actually care about this issue if they
just paid you more, then you aren't the idealist you are trying to paint
yourself as.

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informatimago
I've never seen any company where I worked caring about back contribution. At
most, you could send an email to the lawyers and wait and wait and wait any
answer.

That's why all my code is released only under the AGPL3, so that companies do
not dare use my work without paying for it.

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paulhauggis
"This is sad and in my opinion companies like this are bad users of FOSS."

It might be 'sad' to you, but it's the only reason FOSS has gotten so popular
in the last 10 years. When a company gets large enough and depends on it
enough, they will hire developers to actually fix and contribute to FOSS. With
almost all major projects, this is the case.

"It's really depressing to hear things like this and I feel I'm doing a
disservice to the FOSS community for working at shitty companies like this
even though I depend on the job to pay my bills."

How is it 'shitty'? FOSS is free. Which means the freedom to use it and not
contribute back. It's pretty shitty to put the blame on them for not giving
back to the community.

Also, they are paying you to work there.

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informatimago
You should read the licenses again. It's not $free, and if a corporation
distributes a derived work (in any form, source, binary, firmware), then it
has to provide the sources and their modifications, and their derived works
along, depending on the license, and some other requirements (such as mention
of copyright, etc). When you buy a hardware box, often you don't get the
sources of the firmware containing the GPL linux kernel in it! That's clear
violation of the license terms.

~~~
atinoda-kestrel
FOSS != GPL.

I've written plenty of stuff under the BSD license which has been distributed
with and without modifications in tons of commercial products, rarely with
source. Totally fine, and exactly as I intended.

