You have that problem not just in OSS, but basically all infrastructure donations. That's actually part of the reason why I think infrastructure should be gover

You have that problem not just in OSS, but basically all infrastructure donations. That's actually part of the reason why I think infrastructure should be government-backed in the sense, that "if everyone uses it/benefits from it it might be worthwhile to make everyone pay for it". For a lot of those things usage kind of scales with income. Not always, but more than in other cases. And indeed governments be it the European Union and DARPA for example invest in Open Source. However since it also isn't really like FreeBSD has huge amounts of money each individual donation helps a lot. That's basically where the money that could be taxed goes. Also you kind of ensure that the projects you enjoy a lot make progress, thereby creating more job opportunities where you can work with those technologies. I agree that big corporations should donate more. Maybe writing emails to them makes sense. Kind of making a good press/bad press campaign. Like Apple building products that are based on government sponsored research and therefor shouldn't do every little thing to avoid taxes. Companies invest such big amounts into marketing, selling themselves as good corporate cititzens. I really think that people should put more effort into calling out socially bad companies and praising good behavior. Then they have the choice whether they make marketing to counter or maybe invest and start to be good. Would even be a cool project to track those things. All good and bad stories of companies. Of course companies could try to manipulate that, but they are already trying to cover up bad stuff. I think that could make companies to be more inclined to do the socially good thing. I really hope that marketing will kind of become the showing of how great a company behaves on the planet. Not just making TV spots that look like that.