This would be nice, but since it hasn’t happened so far, hard to see why it would start happening.
No idea what the future will look like in general in 5, 10, or 20 years but I am reasonably confident that donations to OSS won’t be drastically more than they are now.
Fair enough, but having worked inside a lot of tech companies I think I also have a pretty good sense of why tech companies don’t monetarily contribute more: no incentive to do so and because OSS is often chosen specifically to avoid costs.
Hard to see why those things will stop being true.
Refer to any manager or executive at a tech company who uses open source to generate profits but doesn’t contribute as a “deadbeat” — so their choice becomes a source of social embarrassment.
I think most of the executives and managers do - yes.
That’s why I said to shame individuals, not faceless entities. And I think it’s fascinating that you didn’t reply to what I actually said.
Even as you tried to shame me (ie “if you actually believe that, you’re so dumb you’d buy something ridiculous!”) because you recognize that shaming is an effective tactic.
>I think most of the executives and managers do - yes.
To quote someone else who's worked with Big Corp:
>>Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing management. Think of management the way you think of a lawn mower.You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about management.
>Even as you tried to shame me (ie “if you actually believe that, you’re so dumb you’d buy something ridiculous!”) because you recognize that shaming is an effective tactic.
I don't give a fuck what you think. I want to convince other people that you're wrong and we need better solutions for writing open source software because I enjoy doing it and I'd love to get paid for it. As far as I'm concerned you're a badly put together memetic lawnmower whose a danger to everyone around you - the end.
Yeah, I think it would take something like bankruptcy of a Fortune 500 company because a critical open source piece shut down.
And I'm not holding my breath that even that would sink in. People are amazingly talented at hearing only what they want to hear to justify doing it like they've always done it.
unless they're using some sort of hosted service for free, this cannot be critical. After all, software doens't rot, and they could continue to use the existing release until a (new) solution is found.
Look at how crowdstrike triggered outage didn't cause bankruptcy - that is more critical than most OSS would be.
It doesn't rot? I mean if it stops being maintained and the lack of updates makes it fatally insecure or something, it can become effectively obsolete.
Though I will note I'm agreeing that it's highly unlikely you can put a gun to the heads of corporations and get them to cough up, so I'm not sure what the point is here.
> stops being maintained and the lack of updates makes it fatally insecure or something
which doesn't happen instantly. For example, the end of life of the old java versions (1.5, 7 and 8 etc) - plenty of companies simply just paid a support fee and get support, while others paid to upgrade (or even change stack).
Most open source software, even with lack of updates, does not immediately start failing. The huge amount of time and leeway, even with security issues, is what prevents it from being critical, and prevents OSS from causing a bankruptcy.
Well, there's plenty of mission-critical FOSS used by plenty of companies. But you are right in that it doesn't just fail one day, and companies have plenty of time and options for dealing with abandoned FOSS.
(Which is one of the major benefits of FOSS. It's more likely with proprietary software that it can just disappear one day, with little recourse for users.)
> For example, the end of life of the old java versions (1.5, 7 and 8 etc) - plenty of companies simply just paid a support fee and get support, while others paid to upgrade (or even change stack)
And plenty others simply keep using the old 1.8 version because there's no budget to upgrade and there's no budget to 'pay a support fee'. And there's no budget to 'change stack'. Because... there's no budget.
Convincing people you need to upgrade or switch to keep current is often a hard problem, and sometimes has to be done with "you'll get all these new features!". But often "hey, we need some money to upgrade system X" is met with "hrm... it's software! It doesn't rot!".
I cannot prove it, but I am convinced this is an important revenue stream for Redhat. They will patch an ancient Linux kernel forever if you pay them. I have worked at multiple companies where we were running ancient Linux kernels than received regular security updates, courtesy of our Redhat subscription!
Me: "I think you cannot get corporations to cough up without some ridiculous extreme event like a behemoth dying. And I'm not holding my breath that would really do it."
You: "Your extreme ridiculous scenario is extremely ridiculous and here's why..."
> if it stops being maintained and the lack of updates makes it fatally insecure or something, it can become effectively obsolete.
Sure, but that won't happen immediately when the maintainer abandons it. It might not happen at all. There's usually going to be plenty of time for a company to switch to an alternative, or even take on maintainership themselves.
That's only if they agree with your description. I really don't see that happening. I just see the simple, factual retort: "we're not deadbeats, and if you wanted us to pay, you should have sold it to us instead of giving it to us for free."
Which is absolutely correct!
As an open-source author and maintainer, I have no desire or motivation to call any of my users "deadbeats", especially when I license my software under terms that specifically do not require any kind of payment. That would be pretty hypocritical, as I've used lots of open source software (both personally and professionally) without paying for it.
Is there a website where one can see some open source contribution metrics? I found https://opensourceindex.io/ , but the absolute numbers do not tell much by themselves; of course the biggest companies contribute more[1].
[1] apart from Meta and Apple, they seem ridiculously low.
Why would you say that? I believe the GP is correct. Unless something drastically changes, why would we expect companies to start getting generous, spending money they don't have to? Especially in the context of donations! If we're talking about a licensing shift that requires companies to pay, then sure. But for donations? I doubt it.
No idea what the future will look like in general in 5, 10, or 20 years but I am reasonably confident that donations to OSS won’t be drastically more than they are now.