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Should Companies That Use OSS Pay a Tithe?
- iuguy 16y agoI don't agree. If you want people to pay, give the software a licence that requires people to pay a fee. You can still release the source, you don't need to do anything about it. There's a thread over on reddit about how major vendors haven't donated to OpenSSH. OpenSSH comes with a highly unrestrictive licence. If the authors don't like it, then that licence might not be right for the project. If you feel a debt to OSS it's better to contribute back. Looking at what Gabriel is doing in this respect is that he's effectively swapping his time for money, which is fine. But I don't think companies should be required to do this unless it's clear upfront.
- Mithrandir 16y agoTo quote: "The idea is that it becomes a part of the culture, i.e. not one-off donations that need to be repeatedly processed, but something that is the default. " The idea doesn't seem to be "Okay, I donated now I can go about my merry way making proprietary code."
- wmf 16y agoOpenSSH is a bit of a special case, since (AFAIK) if you donate to OpenSSH some fraction of that will actually be spent on OpenBSD instead. You can imagine that Linux users and vendors aren't interested in funding OpenBSD.
- gte910h 16y agoOSS isn't a company. If there is a foundation or a person who will do more if you give them money: Then give them money if that will help you. Lots of OSS is just stuff dumped in github or the like. Honestly the best contribution is paying your devs to give back patches!