Big Names Dominate Open Source Funding 32
jones_supa writes: Network World's analysis of publicly listed sponsors of 36 prominent open-source non-profits and foundations reveals that the lion's share of financial support for open-source groups comes from a familiar set of names. Google was the biggest supporter, appearing on the sponsor lists of eight of the 36 groups analyzed. Four companies – Canonical, SUSE, HP and VMware – supported five groups each, and seven others (Nokia, Oracle, Cisco, IBM, Dell, Intel and NEC) supported four. For its part, Red Hat supports three groups (Linux Foundation, Creative Commons and the Open Virtualization Alliance).
It's tough to get more than a general sense of how much money gets contributed to which foundations by which companies – however, the numbers aren't large by the standards of the big contributors. The average annual revenue for the open-source organizations considered in the analysis was $4.36 million, and that number was skewed by the $27 million taken in by the Wikimedia Foundation (whose interests range far beyond OSS development) and the $17 million posted by Linux Foundation.
It's tough to get more than a general sense of how much money gets contributed to which foundations by which companies – however, the numbers aren't large by the standards of the big contributors. The average annual revenue for the open-source organizations considered in the analysis was $4.36 million, and that number was skewed by the $27 million taken in by the Wikimedia Foundation (whose interests range far beyond OSS development) and the $17 million posted by Linux Foundation.
Nokia? (Score:2)
I'm assuming that's original Nokia and not the cut-off body part that had been assimilated.
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I definitely did not ask about Microsoft.
Re:Nokia? (Score:5, Funny)
For instance, Microsoft is a member of the GNOME foundation
That certainly explains GNOME Shell.
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Microsoft participates in FOSS a lot more than you may realize. For instance, Microsoft is a member of the GNOME foundation
Based on their absence from the top 36, Microsoft participates less than you realize.
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It seems everyone who benefits from FOSS participates in how ever many small ways even M$. So why aren't governments participating more. They give away money to the likes of M$ billions upon billions of dollars whilst also using FOSS software but give nothing to FOSS, whilst give billions to M$ for exactly the same thing, something seems mighty crooked in that.
Where are the government funded and maintained facilities for the FOSS projects they make use of, just to be fair, just to match dollar for dollar
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Why is it that RMS is quick to call all proprietary software unjust, and yet gives a free pass to chipmakers for not publishing their masksets?
I would also like to hear RMS' answer regarding that.
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Re:Open Source Funding (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go, in his own words:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infr... [linuxtoday.com]
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It's true that copying hardware is hard in a way that copying software is not, but only to someone who does not own a compatible factory.
He agrees with you and even made the parallel printing press example for books beofre 50 years ago.
Just as the right to modify code is only directly useful to those who can program
But the right to -copy- code is useful to everyone.
f the masksets were open, anyone with a computer could refactor or simplify the maskset to make a slower but compatible device on older cheaper
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No they wouldn't - the vast majority of silicon vendors are fabless, while some silicon developers don't even sell complete chips at all, only 'IP blocks'. It is absolutely possible to have free/open source chip designs [opencores.org].
I think the big stumbling block currently would be the very limited FOSS tools for synthesis and layout.
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No they wouldn't - the vast majority of silicon vendors are fabless
But the price hurdle to having a 3rd party fab produce your custom chip is still significant. His analogy to the printing press stands.
It is absolutely possible to have free/open source chip designs.
Yes. It is possible. It is even a good thing, and RMS is all for someone doing it. Its just not HIS project. He's not -against- open hardware in anyway. He's just explaining why he's not personally as passionate about it.
And at the end of the da
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Why is it that RMS is quick to call all proprietary software unjust, and yet gives a free pass to chipmakers for not publishing their masksets?
Because his focus is on software, which is the wrong spot to attack the problem. You should be starting at the bottom, not in the middle, otherwise you end up with the exact situation we have now. There is an open operating system running atop a mostly proprietary hardware setup with mostly proprietary driver interfaces to that hardware. Even now, decades after RMS started the free software movement, open drivers (which are the reason it got started in the first place) lag behind their proprietary counterpa
Completely misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Completely misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
yep. Me, for example (Score:3)
That's right. Me, for example. My job is to maintain and improve some software my employer uses, and help others in the organization learn to use it. Since the software system is open source, all of my bug fixes and many of the improvements I do are sent back upstream. (Some aren't generally purpose, but are specific to my employer and their needs.)
You mean? (Score:3)
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The list concentrated on money. EG sponsorship. This ignores contributions and resources directly contributing code.
http://intel-iscsi.sourceforge... [sourceforge.net]
http://www.crunchbase.com/orga... [crunchbase.com]
https://www.virtualbox.org/wik... [virtualbox.org]
http://www.libreoffice.org/ [libreoffice.org]
Use the median (Score:4, Informative)
The average annual revenue for the open-source organizations considered in the analysis was $4.36 million, and that number was skewed by the $27 million taken in by the Wikimedia Foundation
Then compute the median. That's standard practice if an outlier disrupts the mean. It's not like this is rocket science.
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