
The Internet Was Built on the Free Labor of OSS Devs. Is That Sustainable? - n0pe_p0pe
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43zak3/the-internet-was-built-on-the-free-labor-of-open-source-developers-is-that-sustainable
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pizzazzaro
When I evangelize for an open-source project, I tell a company that they need
to do two things to make Free/Libre/Open-Source Software work Really Well:

1 - hire an engineer on your payroll give to this one project ( _maybe_ two,
if theyre both small). Their role is to join the software project, and ensure
that your usecase remains viable. That last bit is where your engineer will
pay for theirself.

2 - give them a giant novelty check once a year at a conference. It doesnt
need to be $100,000 - just give _something_ back, and you may as well do it
where engineers will see you do it.

Does your company have to be a software company to do these things? No. Just
like you dont need to be a software company to need your own social media,
your own website,... But those arent quite like. . .

Your Own App. Your own servers, or cloud presence. Your own in-house software.
These things dont run in a vacuum. Even the proprietary software you run
depends on open-source projects.

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Kazooie_Bird
Didn't Al Gore solely invent the internet? :)

