

Should Companies That Use OSS Pay a Tithe? - J3L2404
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26020/

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iuguy
I don't agree. If you want people to pay, give the software a licence that
requires people to pay a fee. You can still release the source, you don't need
to do anything about it.

There's a thread over on reddit about how major vendors haven't donated to
OpenSSH. OpenSSH comes with a highly unrestrictive licence. If the authors
don't like it, then that licence might not be right for the project.

If you feel a debt to OSS it's better to contribute back. Looking at what
Gabriel is doing in this respect is that he's effectively swapping his time
for money, which is fine. But I don't think companies should be required to do
this unless it's clear upfront.

~~~
wmf
OpenSSH is a bit of a special case, since (AFAIK) if you donate to OpenSSH
some fraction of that will actually be spent on OpenBSD instead. You can
imagine that Linux users and vendors aren't interested in funding OpenBSD.

------
gte910h
OSS isn't a company. If there is a foundation or a person who will do more if
you give them money: Then give them money if that will help you.

Lots of OSS is just stuff dumped in github or the like.

Honestly the best contribution is paying your devs to give back patches!

