
Google ups its Linux Foundation membership to the $500,000/year Platinum level - mikece
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/google-ups-its-linux-foundation-membership-to-the-500000-year-platinum-level/
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nojvek
The amount of Linux foundation OS code that google uses, probably makes them
1000x that amount.

I believe you can't really put a $$ amount on good OS projects. They really do
fundamentally shift how things work for an entire industry and make a tiny
dent in the universe.

While the world worships the Tech billionaires like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Page,
Brin e.t.c Something has to be said for people who pour their hearts and lives
to making a great OS project that's used under the hood almost everywhere.

~~~
scrollaway
Serious question, what would the Linux foundation do with 5bn/year?

~~~
ddingus
Target code needed by municipalities.

A long while back, my city paid for a billing system. Was something like 30,
40 million bucks. They did not own the code, or if they did, were not in a
position to make that the benefit it should have been.

Long story short, they ended up paying a lot more for support, updates, bug
fixes and the like. And then did it again to finally arrive at something
workable!

A group of people, myself included took this to government as an example where
open code could be a much better investment.

For that same sum, an entity could be created to develop that code, making for
local jobs, local revenue and a very likely savings over the long life
possible.

Maintenance fees could provide the entity with the staff needed to maintain
that code, until it pays for itself.

Additionally, that entity could make it available to other municipalities, and
or consult on that problem domain. That turns what us currently a cost center
into revenue that could, at a minimum, lower the cost of the utility currently
paying way too much for software not really adding that much value.

We got bipartisan support. Industry lobbyists killed it off back then. Our
bad. At the time, the thrust was to get OSS written into law as a must
consider. The industry arguments and ability to lobby won the day, and were
compelling to legislstors who were not well equipped to really grok the
potential benefits.

What we shouod have done was push for and more fully develop the plans and non
profit model needed to sell it as a project, or investment.

This all happened in the early 00's too. Its a bit different and even more
plausible today, and legislators are more likely to understand it all better
too.

Open code would mean other projects could build on that effort, and open data
would mean the business of the people would be available where and how needed.

A project of this kind would end up sustainable and would yield consistent
savings to every municipality using it, whether they developed it or not.

Once done, its a model for similar needs and costs and could be repeated
anywhere. An umbrella foundation could unify these things, or several sprout
up, each owning a needed domain, each making revenue and ending up self
sustaining.

Over time, there would be various entities of this kind solving not sexy, but
quite expensive and painful problems that really do need solving.

This kind of thing is not well matched to investors and founders looking to
make big returns. The primary value is making public works, utilities, etc.
lean, efficient.

It's also not well matched to proprietary software houses, who may well
deliver great solutions, but at high margins and with closed and often
expensive dependencies. Their solutions could be a bust too.

It's high risk.

Oregon vs Oracle comes to mind.

This kind of thing is well matched to a non profit type effort, or foundation
and could easily be seen as a public work, of benefit to everyone, in that
taxes, the cost of running the basics in society would be reduced for
everyone.

Cheaper, efficient government basically.

Redirect the savings into things like potholes, schools, health care maybe.

With these kinds of resources, or even a modest fraction, a whole lot of good
can be done.

Pair developers with domain experts and legislators, city council people and
solve some problems. Each solution woukd likely displace closed, expensive
software and doing that would be a public good where it's most needed.

While doing this would not make the Microsofts, Oracles of the world happy, it
would mean a lot of people get to make a great living, and we all see the
benefit of a more lean, efficient use of taxes actually adding value instead
of mostly cost to our lives.

~~~
nojvek
Governments mandating OS code and ownership by the people could go a long way.

Thanks was a great story. Thanks for sharing.

~~~
ddingus
The mandating of open code is a major league sticking point.

I think personally, mandating open data is probably easier, and could be
successful.

Industry lobbies will beat that open code mandate back hard. And I'm not sure
we can win on that basis even today. Open data however, is a no-brainer.

I think the real answer is to just compete. If one of these projects were
started, using the model that I put in my other comment, it would compete very
well. I don't think it's even really a contest. And from there the savings and
the economic forces would push it where it needs to go.

That would set the market opposition to the side, where it really should be.
It may well be that closed proprietary solutions really are the best, and this
would be one way to find that out, and find out where it's appropriate and
where it's not. That's a big win for everyone.

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craftyguy
The Linux Foundation is a corporate PR joke. Even Oracle, slayer of FLOSS
projects for decades, and vmware, violating the GPL for the Linux kernel for
years with ESX, are 'platinum members'[1].

At this point, any membership in this 'foundation' should be viewed a shallow
attempt at marketing.

1\.
[https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/)

~~~
subway
The Linux Foundation _does_ do some pretty useful work. For instance, iirc,
they facilitate much of the work on Let's Encrypt.

~~~
craftyguy
AFAIK, they provide only administrative support (payroll, HR, etc). That's not
really "much of" the work on Let's Encrypt.

There's a whole lot of other facilitating not included in that.. like
infrastructure (hosting, development, test), management, technical support,
etc.

~~~
sja
I think it's important to not underestimate the amount of time and effort that
goes into the non-technical side of any organization.

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ymse
It's funny and sad how Linux Foundation gets all the attention from these
corporations, when GNU/FSF have been just as (or more) enabling for their
success (ignoring Android for a moment).

Imagine what GNU could do if they had just a fraction of the donations LF
receives. Perhaps we could finally get good, affordable hardware that respects
our freedoms.

Misunderstand me right, Linux Foundation does great work and deserve the
success, but they likely would not exist if it wasn't for the FSF.

~~~
wmf
_Imagine what GNU could do if they had just a fraction of the donations LF
receives._

Publish more rants telling people to stop using all software and services they
enjoy? Fork already-free software to be more free? Rewrite popular BSD-
licensed software as GPLv3?

 _Perhaps we could finally get good, affordable hardware that respects our
freedoms._

The way to get freedom-respecting hardware is to build something 80% free,
then invest the profits into a second generation that's 90% free, then 95%,
etc. Companies like Purism are doing this but the FSF isn't willing to
compromise so they make no progress.

~~~
greenhouse_gas
>Rewrite popular BSD-licensed software as GPLv3?

What do they rewrite? To the best of my knowledge, they have no problem
_using_ BSD licensed software, they just won't _develop_ BSD license
software[1] (mostly, though they do approve it here and there for new
projects).

[1]. More accurately, they won't approve it for _new_ projects. But the
projects are fine.

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pecg
When I read things like this, it makes appreciate OpenBSD (and the rest of
projects under the OpenBSD Foundation) even more, considering how it is still
actively and fearlessly maintained by few individuals (less than 40),
motivated mainly by their own enthusiast and passion, investing their own time
and money on it, just for the purpose of producing a bloat-free OS focused on
security and correctness, that can rival GNU/Linux in terms of performance.

~~~
ksec
Um... How do the 40+ OpenBSD make living? I first thought donations to FreeBSD
were already tiny compared to Linux, and then OpenBSD seems to be even
smaller.

I am amazed at how the BSD community continue to survive when Linux has
literally suck out all the OS OS development fundings.

~~~
pecg
FreeBSD's kernel offers better performance (on the server) compared to Linux,
and the licensing model makes it more attractive to some industries. Whatsapp
(server side), Netflix, and the internals of PS3/4 all use FreeBSD code.
OpenBSD is actively used in networks, as a firewall (where iptables from Linux
is a mess) and other security oriented aspects where stability is also
crucial. Linux is popular because it became available to users first than the
others back in the 90s, OpenBSD's contributors, on the contrary, are
comfortable on not implementing overengineered "features" with the sole
purpose on keeping the source clean, stable, and with as less bugs as
possible, as a UNIX system should be.

------
jesperht
I may be cynical, but I'll make a bet that there's a big Fuchsia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia))
announcement on the horizon and Google wants to have some evidence to point to
that shows they still care about Linux to combat the inevitable "Google is
abandoning Linux" FUD/headlines.

~~~
jononor
To add to the cynicism... Maybe Linux Foundation will host that as one of
their Collaborative Projects? :)

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sergiotapia
Seems like a ridiculously low amount of money from the world's largest
company. Doesn't Linux power their entire business?

~~~
rootlocus
They also contributed a lot of work to the linux kernel like initial support
for containers with cgroups in 2006-2007.

~~~
antirez
I've a rule: don't consider "give back" to the community things that are
strictly aligned to what you need. Google contributes a lot to the Linux
kernel by other means as well, but the work to the containers was strategic
for them. To really provide something back is to give $$$ or work to just make
a project better regardless of your end goals. Otherwise it's great that you
are doing it as OSS, but I would not consider it a "give back" from what you
got.

~~~
Karunamon
Meh. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right
thing. If everyone benefits from their additions, it's immaterial to me what
the intent of those additions were.

~~~
SquareWheel
And even then is it "the wrong reasons"? Surely most third party contributions
to the Linux core are from people that need a feature or support for a
specific use case.

------
ironjunkie
I have a mixed view about this. On one hand I'm happy to see money going back
to open source, but then I'm not sure those foundations are a good thing at
the end of the day.

They bring politics, ego, and other undesired side-effects to open source. I
saw that happening for a lot of projects that were very well self-managed
until they grew to become part of a foundation, with all the politics that
come with it.

~~~
zeroxfe
IMO, politics are an unfortunate result of any kind of growth. Even self-
managed organizations become political when they scale up -- it's just the
nature of society.

I think the best organizations are the ones that actively manage their
political complexity.

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yelloweyes
500k lol that's peanuts. That's basically what they spend yearly on a good
engineer.

~~~
z0r
keep in mind they also pay engineer salaries to work on stuff that gets
contributed back to the kernel (and other projects). of course that's with a
healthy dose of self interest, but this 500k isn't the real bottom line

~~~
ebikelaw
Indeed Google has hundreds of engineers dedicated to kernel projects, not just
people who are allowed to dabble in it.

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394549
While I'm glad that they're increasing their donation (and donating at all),
I'm surprised it's only to $0.5 million per year for a company as big,
profitable, and Linux-dependent as Google is. Though I suppose they also
donate labor, which might not be quantified publicly.

~~~
forkerenok
I've been thinking about it as well and came to an idea that excessive
donation can be damning to the recipient. Tougher constraints keep you
sharper.

~~~
tivert
That's true, but there's so much open source around and so many critical
projects are developed on a shoestring or by time-pressed volunteers. We
learned the consequences that hard way with OpenSSL (and at least partially
mitigated them since).

An excessive donation could pay for some needed but more workmanlike
development, like better open source drivers (or hardware reverse-engineering
to create them).

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ocdtrekkie
Tencent became a platinum member a mere three days ago:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/24/tencent-increases-its-
focu...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/24/tencent-increases-its-focus-on-
open-source/)

I wonder if that may have prompted Google to up it's place on the list.
Regardless, more money to open source is a good thing.

~~~
bitpush
I dont think you drop half a million dollars because a news article came out.
My guess is this was in the works for a while, carefully assessing impact,
risks and potential reactions.

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sandov
Does the Linux Foundation really help Linux and _software libre_? If so, in
what ways?

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sharpshadow
Everybody talking about money here, more important is the choice who will join
the foundation. A precious position in your hand as employer.

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kova12
Just a bit below two mid level developer salaries at Google.

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zakki
Is that enough to make the best Linux desktop ever?

~~~
Someone1234
Google already did that twice. Android and ChromeOS.

~~~
batteryhorse
Best, not worst

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yani
The title should read Google bought a seat at Linux Foundation board of
directors for $500k.

~~~
j16sdiz
Microsoft bought their seat sometime ago. That's how they got LF's public
endorsement for buying GitHub.

~~~
dingo_bat
Is that relevant to the comment you replied to?

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hi41
$500k per is a rounding error for Google. Why didn't they do this earlier?

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ksk
Meanwhile, IBM has poured Billions with a capital B to turn Linux from a
hobbyist me-too to a top-tier OS.

~~~
jrs95
Pretty sure Linux was great before IBM was pouring jack shit into it

~~~
ghaff
It was being used in a lot of Internet infrastructure but IBM investments (and
marketing) are what really sent a message that enterprises could safely start
using it.

