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Google ups its Linux Foundation membership to the $500,000/year Platinum level
- 394549 8y agoWhile I'm glad that they're increasing their donation (and donating at all), I'm surprised it's only to $0.5 million per year for a company as big, profitable, and Linux-dependent as Google is. Though I suppose they also donate labor, which might not be quantified publicly.
- forkerenok 8y agoI've been thinking about it as well and came to an idea that excessive donation can be damning to the recipient. Tougher constraints keep you sharper.
- tivert 8y agoThat's true, but there's so much open source around and so many critical projects are developed on a shoestring or by time-pressed volunteers. We learned the consequences that hard way with OpenSSL (and at least partially mitigated them since). An excessive donation could pay for some needed but more workmanlike development, like better open source drivers (or hardware reverse-engineering to create them).
- izacus 8y agoThey're also one of the biggest contributors of code, donating significantly more in engineering time and pay.
- throwaway5752 8y agoHow many Googlers contribute on corporate time or in their spare time? If you offer FT employment to a maintainer, that's just as meaningful. For those questioning the donation/what it would be useful, or if you disagree with me that employment of oss contributors is an important form of support, please go back to recent history and look at what led up to Heartbleed in the OpenSSL project from an internal maintainer/organization perspective and what the Linux Foundation did in response to it.
- nojvek 8y agoThe amount of Linux foundation OS code that google uses, probably makes them 1000x that amount. I believe you can't really put a $$ amount on good OS projects. They really do fundamentally shift how things work for an entire industry and make a tiny dent in the universe. While the world worships the Tech billionaires like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Page, Brin e.t.c Something has to be said for people who pour their hearts and lives to making a great OS project that's used under the hood almost everywhere.
- scrollaway 8y agoSerious question, what would the Linux foundation do with 5bn/year?
- fabianhjr 8y agoProbably R&D like Mozilla did with Rust and Quantum. (Long-term pay off)
- pavs 8y agoThings they can't do without 5bn/year. Sometimes you can think about fixing problems, only when you have the resources to do it. Alternatively, its also possible the administration can go corrupt when there is so much money flying around. Non-profits can do mismanagement their funds.
- wallace_f 8y ago$500M in charitable donations to Haiti through the Red Cross seems to have gone missing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326335 The average person deserves to know how badly charity, foreign aid, and government programs can often be at improving human welfare. Not always, but often.
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoVery true[1] but I would suggest that the Red Cross is unusually unreliable (I always wince when I see people earnestly recommending them, there are hundreds of NGOs which are more efficient and transparent). 1: https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoTencent became a platinum member a mere three days ago: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/24/tencent-increases-its-focus-on-open-source/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/24/tencent-increases-its-focu... I wonder if that may have prompted Google to up it's place on the list. Regardless, more money to open source is a good thing.
- bitpush 8y agoI dont think you drop half a million dollars because a news article came out. My guess is this was in the works for a while, carefully assessing impact, risks and potential reactions.
- craftyguy 8y agoThe Linux Foundation is a corporate PR joke. Even Oracle, slayer of FLOSS projects for decades, and vmware, violating the GPL for the Linux kernel for years with ESX, are 'platinum members'[1]. At this point, any membership in this 'foundation' should be viewed a shallow attempt at marketing. 1. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/
- matt4077 8y agoYou're judging the foundation by who decides to give them half a million $ per year? If Oracle, or anyone else you don't like, donates to the EFF, or the Red Cross or whatever: does that also taint those organizations?
- mugsie 8y agoSure, take their money, but don't give them a seat on the board of the organisation.
- TomMarius 8y agoAre the funds not used to develop Linux?
- subway 8y agoThe Linux Foundation does do some pretty useful work. For instance, iirc, they facilitate much of the work on Let's Encrypt.
- craftyguy 8y agoAFAIK, they provide only administrative support (payroll, HR, etc). That's not really "much of" the work on Let's Encrypt. There's a whole lot of other facilitating not included in that.. like infrastructure (hosting, development, test), management, technical support, etc.
- subway 8y ago
- yelloweyes 8y ago500k lol that's peanuts. That's basically what they spend yearly on a good engineer.
- z0r 8y agokeep in mind they also pay engineer salaries to work on stuff that gets contributed back to the kernel (and other projects). of course that's with a healthy dose of self interest, but this 500k isn't the real bottom line
- ebikelaw 8y agoIndeed Google has hundreds of engineers dedicated to kernel projects, not just people who are allowed to dabble in it.
- ksk 8y agoMeanwhile, IBM has poured Billions with a capital B to turn Linux from a hobbyist me-too to a top-tier OS.
- jrs95 8y agoPretty sure Linux was great before IBM was pouring jack shit into it
- ghaff 8y agoIt was being used in a lot of Internet infrastructure but IBM investments (and marketing) are what really sent a message that enterprises could safely start using it.
- justinclift 8y agoWasn't that mostly stategic, as a counter to Microsoft?
- sergiotapia 8y agoSeems like a ridiculously low amount of money from the world's largest company. Doesn't Linux power their entire business?
- rootlocus 8y agoThey also contributed a lot of work to the linux kernel like initial support for containers with cgroups in 2006-2007.
- antirez 8y agoI've a rule: don't consider "give back" to the community things that are strictly aligned to what you need. Google contributes a lot to the Linux kernel by other means as well, but the work to the containers was strategic for them. To really provide something back is to give $$$ or work to just make a project better regardless of your end goals. Otherwise it's great that you are doing it as OSS, but I would not consider it a "give back" from what you got.
- Karunamon 8y agoMeh. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing. If everyone benefits from their additions, it's immaterial to me what the intent of those additions were.
- SquareWheel 8y agoAnd even then is it "the wrong reasons"? Surely most third party contributions to the Linux core are from people that need a feature or support for a specific use case.
- pkulak 8y agoIsn't that the entire point of open source? I need a project, but it lacks the one feature I need. So I build the feature, contribute it back, and everyone wins. Is Google supposed to work on Amazon's needs and vice versa for them to be considered good patrons?
- sandov 8y agoDoes the Linux Foundation really help Linux and software libre? If so, in what ways?
- yani 8y agoThe title should read Google bought a seat at Linux Foundation board of directors for $500k.
- zakki 8y agoIs that enough to make the best Linux desktop ever?
- Someone1234 8y agoGoogle already did that twice. Android and ChromeOS.
- batteryhorse 8y agoBest, not worst
- ironjunkie 8y agoI have a mixed view about this. On one hand I'm happy to see money going back to open source, but then I'm not sure those foundations are a good thing at the end of the day. They bring politics, ego, and other undesired side-effects to open source. I saw that happening for a lot of projects that were very well self-managed until they grew to become part of a foundation, with all the politics that come with it.
- zeroxfe 8y agoIMO, politics are an unfortunate result of any kind of growth. Even self-managed organizations become political when they scale up -- it's just the nature of society. I think the best organizations are the ones that actively manage their political complexity.
- ymse 8y agoIt's funny and sad how Linux Foundation gets all the attention from these corporations, when GNU/FSF have been just as (or more) enabling for their success (ignoring Android for a moment). Imagine what GNU could do if they had just a fraction of the donations LF receives. Perhaps we could finally get good, affordable hardware that respects our freedoms. Misunderstand me right, Linux Foundation does great work and deserve the success, but they likely would not exist if it wasn't for the FSF.
- xyzzy_plugh 8y agoWhile I agree with you, GNU/FSF is only one player. Userspace isn't as important and is frankly replaceable in Enterprise. I've worked a few gigs, and shipped some products, where we didn't use any GNU software at all. Additionally, userspace isn't where a lot of the development needs to happen. We don't need new features or performance tuning of existing tools. We usually just write new ones.
- ymse 8y ago> I've worked a few gigs, and shipped some products, where we didn't use any GNU software at all. That's very impressive (assuming you were developing for Linux). I guess no one used Emacs, or GDB, and you were cross-compiling (using Clang and LLD) from Windows or macOS?
- trasz 8y agoYou mean, GCC and the GNU toolchain, as it's the only actually crucial thing that can be attributed to FSF? It already seems to be quite well supported by hardware vendors, even if more "researchy" projects are slowly migrating towards LLVM.
- DannyBee 8y agoIt's neither funny, nor sad, it's a pretty direct reflection of the fact that GNU/FSF is pretty ineffective at achieving any of those goals over time themselves.
- akerro 8y agoYea, we could, but that's not what their sponsors want.
- jesperht 8y agoI may be cynical, but I'll make a bet that there's a big Fuchsia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia) announcement on the horizon and Google wants to have some evidence to point to that shows they still care about Linux to combat the inevitable "Google is abandoning Linux" FUD/headlines.
- jononor 8y agoTo add to the cynicism... Maybe Linux Foundation will host that as one of their Collaborative Projects? :)
- pecg 8y agoWhen I read things like this, it makes appreciate OpenBSD (and the rest of projects under the OpenBSD Foundation) even more, considering how it is still actively and fearlessly maintained by few individuals (less than 40), motivated mainly by their own enthusiast and passion, investing their own time and money on it, just for the purpose of producing a bloat-free OS focused on security and correctness, that can rival GNU/Linux in terms of performance.
- ksec 8y agoUm... How do the 40+ OpenBSD make living? I first thought donations to FreeBSD were already tiny compared to Linux, and then OpenBSD seems to be even smaller. I am amazed at how the BSD community continue to survive when Linux has literally suck out all the OS OS development fundings.
- pecg 8y agoFreeBSD's kernel offers better performance (on the server) compared to Linux, and the licensing model makes it more attractive to some industries. Whatsapp (server side), Netflix, and the internals of PS3/4 all use FreeBSD code. OpenBSD is actively used in networks, as a firewall (where iptables from Linux is a mess) and other security oriented aspects where stability is also crucial. Linux is popular because it became available to users first than the others back in the 90s, OpenBSD's contributors, on the contrary, are comfortable on not implementing overengineered "features" with the sole purpose on keeping the source clean, stable, and with as less bugs as possible, as a UNIX system should be.
- sharpshadow 8y agoEverybody talking about money here, more important is the choice who will join the foundation. A precious position in your hand as employer.
- hi41 8y ago$500k per is a rounding error for Google. Why didn't they do this earlier?
- kova12 8y agoJust a bit below two mid level developer salaries at Google.