San Francisco Billboards Call Out Tech Firms For Not Paying For Open Source (theregister.com) 48
An anonymous reader shares a report: Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don't cough up for the open source code that they use. The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge -- a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up -- but project co-founder Chad Whitacre wants bigger firms to pay their dues, too.
Whitacre, whose day job is head of open source at app-monitoring biz Sentry, told The Register his employer has for three years operated a scheme to pay developers who maintain and upgrade open source code. "We do dollars per developer, the thinking being it's the developers and software engineers on the staff at a company who benefit the most from open source, who become more productive because of open source," he said. "I had one conversation with a representative from a larger firm and he's like: 'Chad, you're asking me to spend ten million on maintainers.'" Whitacre affirmed that request, and pointed out the firm "spends ten million on something anyway."
Whitacre, whose day job is head of open source at app-monitoring biz Sentry, told The Register his employer has for three years operated a scheme to pay developers who maintain and upgrade open source code. "We do dollars per developer, the thinking being it's the developers and software engineers on the staff at a company who benefit the most from open source, who become more productive because of open source," he said. "I had one conversation with a representative from a larger firm and he's like: 'Chad, you're asking me to spend ten million on maintainers.'" Whitacre affirmed that request, and pointed out the firm "spends ten million on something anyway."
Flaw (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious flaw in this plan is that it requires tech companies to feel shame for what they are doing.
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The obvious flaw in this plan is that it requires tech companies to feel shame for what they are doing.
Tech companies don't feel anything because they're not living creatures and thus have no emotions or sensory organs. The rich people who run tech companies however...
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Why should they feel shame, or anything at all, to begin with?
I already know for a fact that Adobe is using code from a PR I submitted to a rust crate a long time ago. I couldn't fucking care less if they never felt shame over not paying me for it, mainly because I never even asked anything for it. And I don't even like Adobe.
If I, as a developer, didn't want people using my code commercially without paying me, I'd just say so in the license. Any developer that wants payment but doesn't stipulate it in the
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I agree with you wholeheartedly (except the reference to AmiMoJo) and think this push is coming from developers like Mullenweg who have fundamentally changed their views since they started developing OSS. The issue I see is that this group thinks that it's speaking for all OSS developers. Sure, anybody who never expected free coffee money would be glad if they got some, but I wonder if most OSS developers would want to be represented via campaigns attempting to shame the users of their code. This is no d
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Fair point, and even more far-fetched considering that these companies aren't accused of actually doing anything *wrong*.
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Fair point, and even more far-fetched considering that these companies aren't accused of actually doing anything *wrong*.
What did they do wrong? They complied with the license the author gave them.
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I agree, they did nothing wrong. That's my point, why should they feel "guilty"?
Re: Flaw (Score:3)
One nagging thing on my mind here is, how are they determining who gets paid, and how much? And how much of a cut does this organization take? And did the developers agree to that amount? What of the developers who don't want any money to change hands?
If all of the above can't be answered in detail, then this feels like somebody trying to insert themselves as a middleman when nobody even asked for one.
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https://www.ascap.com/ [ascap.com]
Re: Flaw (Score:2)
Most companies would reasonably be expected to send all their donations directly to Linus, the Linux Foundation, the FSF, the LLVM Foundation, and the GNU Foundation, in about that order.
None of the money would reasonably make it into the pockets of any developers that aren't already well funded, because the marginal value all these developers provide is pretty much $0 compared to the big players.
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Well, another flaw is it requires that people who see the billboards to actually care - or even have a modicum of pertinent knowledge. I suspect the vast majority of people who see these billboards will go "Huh? what the heck is that about? Is that some weird religious billboard?"
You gave it away for free, live with that (Score:2)
The obvious flaw in this plan is that it requires tech companies to feel shame for what they are doing.
No, the flaw was the theory of open source consulting. That contributors would be compensated by consulting to update an open source project as needed by some company. Well that consultation was prefaced with if you cannot make the changes yourself, and the tech companies generally can make the changes themselves.
So no, sorry, you volunteered to give something away for free. Live with that choice.
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No, the flaw was the theory of open source consulting. That contributors would be compensated by consulting to update an open source project as needed by some company.
I think this creates all the wrong incentives. If developers want to give their product free and make their money from consulting, then the product has to require consulting. This means it can't be too easy to use (or at least to use efficiently), or nobody would need to hire consultants. It means the product shouldn't be too stable, or the companies will see that and stop paying for support they never use. It means that the documentation shouldn't be too complete or too clear and it shouldn't cover all the
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Isn't the whole point of Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Isn't the whole point of Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between ought and must is a social construct.
Commercial software must be paid for or MWG will come for you, ultimately.
Open Source developers ought to be supported. At worst the software you depend on for commerce will go away or have fatal bugs (e.g. ntpd). In either case you'll be in real trouble.
At best the software gets faster, better, updated, and remains available and secure.
With the new EU software liability laws this is going to be a real issue in about two years.
I'll admit to not registering all my Shareware back in the day but the ones I depended on or used commercially all got registered. Kaji made it easy.
I still have a letter I got from a boy in France whose library I used and I bought him a $125 CS textbook off his Amazon wishlist - I had no idea he was a youth until he said he was thrilled and his Mom made him write a thank you note.
I should find that letter and look him up - he'd be in his thirties now. Maybe he's done great things in CS! He only had a link to his wishlist on his homepage and no request for payment. But it was the right thing to do.
I am not an undead corporation, however.
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The difference between ought and must is a social construct.
Commercial software must be paid for or MWG will come for you, ultimately.
Open Source developers ought to be supported. At worst the software you depend on for commerce will go away or have fatal bugs (e.g. ntpd). In either case you'll be in real trouble.
At best the software gets faster, better, updated, and remains available and secure.
One challenge is if the start paying they will expect support and updates, features they want in return. Right now, it's WYSIWYG, but once companies start ponying up that will change expectations; and if they aren't met the money will go away.
With the new EU software liability laws this is going to be a real issue in about two years.
The question is, whose's responsible for ensuring the EU law is met? The maintainer? The copyright owner? Someone who distributes or installs and supports it? That law has the potential to cause havoc for free software developers.
Re:Isn't the whole point of Open Source (Score:4)
Open Source developers ought to be supported. At worst the software you depend on for commerce will go away or have fatal bugs (e.g. ntpd).
Why ought they be compensated? They volunteered to give away their work. They knew the potential consulting opportunities were for situations where an individual or company could not make the changes themselves. Tech companies can do that themselves. That was the deal from day one, what all open source devs agreed to.
In either case you'll be in real trouble.
Not tech companies, they can fix it themselves.
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Here's the flip side - a developer working on open-source might not want to be paid for their work. It's for fun, to scratch an itch. If they take money, then they're now forced to maintain that piece of work. Or worse yet, they may have to work on parts they don't want to, because the person paying suddenly needs that feature.
I mean, if you wanted to be paid, you've got options between commercial software, shareware or other similar type of deal.
Open source offers freedom to people. And freedom also means
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With the new EU software liability laws this is going to be a real issue in about two years.
If they do that I'll just add a clause to anything I post to github that it's very strictly not for use within the EU. Not that I'd actively try to sue any of them, but I'd sure as shit use it at least try to recoup any losses if I ever got detained there.
Either way, if you've contributed in any way to any software at all, it's probably not a good idea to ever set foot in France, with or without this law. They've already established precedent that the whole world is their jurisdiction when it comes to anyth
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"Open Source developers ought to be supported. At worst the software you depend on for commerce will go away or have fatal bugs (e.g. ntpd). In either case you'll be in real trouble."
This is all bullshit. It is the "Open Source developers" that choose the license. They choose to not "be supported" in their terms. Anyone who chooses to use software under terms of the license accept the possibility of "fatal bugs" just as in all software, and the license ensures that the software does NOT "go away".
"At bes
Tech can make changes themselves ... (Score:2)
Is that you get to use the source code royalty and payment free? Or am I missing something? Surely if devs want to get paid, then they should release their code under a commercial licence.
The authors never got the consultation gigs they hoped for. Well, they apparently did understand the theory of open source very well. Those consultation gigs were for the cases where a user or company could not make the changes themselves. Tech companies tend to have people who can make the changes themselves.
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I would hope that OSS devs put their stuff out there under a license that they understand and are happy with. I certainly do. But we know it's more complicated than that.
Plenty of people are in it just for the fun, but I also do know that lots of OSS projects do want to receive some compensation for their efforts and have struggled with it. Contributors may not want to participate if they need to sign away their copyright. Custom licenses and dual licensing can reduce adoption of your project by others.
OSS
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Is that you get to use the source code royalty and payment free? Or am I missing something? Surely if devs want to get paid, then they should release their code under a commercial licence.
The point is that you're not locked into the whims of a single company. If a proprietary company decides to go in a direction you don't like, up to completely abandoning the product that's mission critical to your business, you're kinda hooped.
With Open Source you're protected against that as the developers are more focused on building the software, not executing some larger corporate strategy. And in the worst case you can simply hire your own devs to maintain the package internally.
This has the added bene
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Exactly. If you want money form a nonprofit and license it accordingly. If you give it away for free then you made your choice and whining about it after the fact is ridiculous.
Guiltware (Score:2)
Not their fault OSS has no paying business model (Score:2)
I think it's rather ridiculous to blame anyone else for the lack of viable models for OSS. Especially not the fault of the "Tech Firms" that were so successful in and near San Francisco. The real problem with FOSS was the confusion of "free" as related to freedom with "free" as related to paying. Especially as regards to paying up front.
The economic models that succeed are apparently the greed-driven ones. Where success is always defined by and for the benefit of the winners of previous lotteries. Doesn't m
Re: Not their fault OSS has no paying business mod (Score:2)
OSS has a business model. It's called using a license that requires payment for commercial use.
If you don't do that, you have absolutely no right to complain when people comply with the terms of the license you chose.
Re: Not their fault OSS has no paying business mo (Score:1)
Can't work (Score:2)
If you give something away, you can't reasonably expect payment for it.
It would be nice to see companies contribute dev time or money to projects they have found valuable, but that's all.
the Open Source Pledge (Score:2)
2. Do it sustainably, and scale it with our growth.
“I was reminded of a number of scenarios that I had personally experienced when speaking with other founders
--
Going on the comments, it's sad watching the Register being reduced to trolling Open Source
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I have built an entire ecosystem : encrypted network/vpn connecting desktop (linux) and mobile devices (android) with $0 on licenses. Haven't paid a license fee in over 20 years. My clients are super happy with 100% core functionality and zero surveillance. Second devices can be used for
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1. Pay maintainers, directly.
They are paid. They are the employees of the tech companies that need a particular change or addition. Weren't users entitled to making changes themselves rather than hire the original authors?
meh (Score:2)
The reason why open source works is it's not paid. If it were paid, suddenly the work would be done differently, on a different timeline. It would not be driven by passion and need, it would be driven by commerce.
When I create an open source project, I only do it because I personally want or need that code to exist in the world. I wouldn't be spending my time on it if something else already existed that did what I needed. Since I already need it, I don't need to get paid to make it; I would be making it any
Ironic this... (Score:3)
Were it not for open source, none of these companies would exist. If Linux or BSDs didn't exist, companies would be paying a good amount for each machine, and paying for stuff like compilers, more cores/CPUs, ability to have more than two users at a time, and other things. We barely got away from a fate where set-top boxes would have been the mainstay of WANs instead of the Internet, and having to deal with a monopolistic service like CompuServe that controls all access, be it uploads, downloads, email, etc.
Linux is the reason why the Web was able to expand so quickly. Same with F/OSS things, be it PostgreSQL, MySQL, Apache, and many other utilities which are the cornerstone of many companies.
Maybe this might turn around. With companies not adding much to existing commercial programs other than hiking licensing fees, maybe companies might find it lucrative to pay a relatively small amount to F/OSS foundations, because long term, something like Proxmox is a lot cheaper than VMWare when it comes to licensing.
Those guys sound like the grifters. (Score:3)
Seems like attention seeking and some kind of scam from the people putting those billboards up.
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It is someone trying to insert themselves as a paid middleman in a free transaction.
The creators did not ask to be paid for their creation. They gave it away as Open Source -intentionally.
This guy created a foundation to strongarm businesses that use OSS. He does not represent the creators. He just wants to get paid.
Even if he contributes the majority of the funds collected to support developers, he will take his cut off the top.
Actions like this make Open Source Software look bad. Companies will fear t
Re: Those guys sound like the grifters. (Score:1)
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Agreed. It stinks totally of a grift. Donate money to me to build the wall.
Open source... (Score:2)
...is the new closed source.
Completely antithetical ... (Score:1)
Sounds like the DEI racket (Score:1)