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While 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,
by 394549 8y ago
While 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.