3 ms·

It's funny how we sit here splitting hairs over how open source devs can get jobs or fucked. Google's got over $100b in cash. Apple's got over $100b in cash.

It's funny how we sit here splitting hairs over how open source devs can get jobs or fucked. Google's got over $100b in cash. Apple's got over $100b in cash. AWS nets Bezos about a million in profit an hour. Open source contributes massively to their opportunities and technologies. These companies are dependent on open source software being written and maintained to power their products and operations. The missing open source funding is sitting in plain sight, held by companies who literally colluded to not even pay their own workers market rates. Maybe one solution is a blanket prohibition of FAANG companies using our software until this abusive relationship is made more amicable. It sounds stupid but any one of them could slap together an UBI for 100,000 open source developers around the world. Together they would barely notice the cost. Isn't that hilariously unlikely from companies utterly dependent on open source software with perhaps more than a quarter trillion in cash between them.

kerkeslager 7y ago
Would the terms of the AGPL3[1] fit what you're talking about? The idea of the AGPL is that if you expose a service online which uses AGPL licensed software, you're required to publish the source code with any modifications or additions you've made to it. I'm not sure on the enforceability of these provisions (how would we know if i.e. Amazon was using a modified version of AGPL software and not publishing their changes?). But, if it works as intended, the AGPL would require that these companies publish the improvements they make to open source software. This would prevent situations like Amazon using modified Linux on their servers without contributing the modifications back to the community. This is a more careful closing of the larger loophole in non-copyleft license that allows, for example, Apple to take BSD code for MacOS X, without contributing back to BSD. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License
- benologist 7y ago
  No. You can't pay rent with their improvements and there's only certain types of software, and a handful of titles, that these companies modify like that. Funding open source development needs to be across-the-board inclusive, it is the "R" in "R&D". Open source benefits from a massive parallel pipeline of bad projects and inferior efforts and abandoned ideas from which comes great stuff, but even the bad stuff can teach a lot.
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    If those improvements align with your customers' goals then yes, you can pay rent with them.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > No. You can't pay rent with their improvements and there's only certain types of software, and a handful of titles, that these companies modify like that. I don't know about that. I suspect that a lot of the time, when a company wants to use modified open source software, they pay someone to make the modifications. Usually, they hire their own person, because they can pay them to make the modifications and then they own those modifications and can keep them internally, but that has a lot of costs: they have to pay the person to become familiar with the source code. It's much cheaper to pay the original developer to make the modifications you want, because they are already familiar with the source code. So if companies couldn't keep the results of the developers' work, they might as well pay the original developer to make the modifications, which both pays the developer's rent, and allows them the choice of what parts of the modifications to include in the end product. > Funding open source development needs to be across-the-board inclusive, it is the "R" in "R&D". Open source benefits from a massive parallel pipeline of bad projects and inferior efforts and abandoned ideas from which comes great stuff, but even the bad stuff can teach a lot. This is a good point.
- Crinus 7y ago
  AGPL doesn't fix the problem as it isn't a matter of these companies using the code, but the developers being taken advantage of unfairly. Amazon publishing their modified Linux wont be of much help to anyone who isn't Amazon and uses Amazon's hardware - the only one who might be helped is other entities like Amazon (namely, Google, Apple, etc). The problem isn't even companies not contributing back changes (Apple does, for example), it is merely developers essentially working for multibillion companies "for free". Of course this is a problem that developers made for themselves and something that they were warned against but chose to ignore.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    I think that this is maybe mistaking why some developers create free software in the first place. Personally, it's not about money when I do it--for me it's about pushing humanity forward with new capabilities. So for me, the problem really is companies not contributing back changes. Even if companies use my software, I don't see it as me working for them for free, I see it as me working for humanity for free. That said, no free software I've ever written has ever gotten a significant user base, so perhaps my feelings would be different if I were a more successful free software developer.
lacker 7y ago
The missing open source funding is sitting in plain sight But these large companies do massively fund open source. They just do it by having their engineers create open source software, rather than paying money to independent engineers. Kubernetes, TypeScript, Go, Tensorflow, React, Angular, these open source libraries have had millions of dollars of engineer time put into them, and that cost was primarily paid by large tech companies.
- benologist 7y ago
  That's a tiny, luxurious little subset of open source. Open source is also 500,000 other projects being worked on in parallel from which FAANG are waiting to exploit anything of interest. Underneath their open source software is a chain of open source dependencies all the way down to the bare metal where the developers are not even considered.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Would the terms of the AGPL3[1] fit what you're talking about? The idea of the AGPL is that if you expose a service online which uses AGPL licensed software, you're required to publish the source code with any modifications or additions you've made to it. I'm not sure on the enforceability of these provisions (how would we know if i.e. Amazon was using a modified version of AGPL software and not publishing their changes?). But, if it works as intended, the AGPL would require that these companies publish the improvements they make to open source software. This would prevent situations like Amazon using modified Linux on their servers without contributing the modifications back to the community. This is a more careful closing of the larger loophole in non-copyleft license that allows, for example, Apple to take BSD code for MacOS X, without contributing back to BSD. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

benologist 7y ago
No. You can't pay rent with their improvements and there's only certain types of software, and a handful of titles, that these companies modify like that. Funding open source development needs to be across-the-board inclusive, it is the "R" in "R&D". Open source benefits from a massive parallel pipeline of bad projects and inferior efforts and abandoned ideas from which comes great stuff, but even the bad stuff can teach a lot.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  If those improvements align with your customers' goals then yes, you can pay rent with them.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > No. You can't pay rent with their improvements and there's only certain types of software, and a handful of titles, that these companies modify like that. I don't know about that. I suspect that a lot of the time, when a company wants to use modified open source software, they pay someone to make the modifications. Usually, they hire their own person, because they can pay them to make the modifications and then they own those modifications and can keep them internally, but that has a lot of costs: they have to pay the person to become familiar with the source code. It's much cheaper to pay the original developer to make the modifications you want, because they are already familiar with the source code. So if companies couldn't keep the results of the developers' work, they might as well pay the original developer to make the modifications, which both pays the developer's rent, and allows them the choice of what parts of the modifications to include in the end product. > Funding open source development needs to be across-the-board inclusive, it is the "R" in "R&D". Open source benefits from a massive parallel pipeline of bad projects and inferior efforts and abandoned ideas from which comes great stuff, but even the bad stuff can teach a lot. This is a good point.
Crinus 7y ago
AGPL doesn't fix the problem as it isn't a matter of these companies using the code, but the developers being taken advantage of unfairly. Amazon publishing their modified Linux wont be of much help to anyone who isn't Amazon and uses Amazon's hardware - the only one who might be helped is other entities like Amazon (namely, Google, Apple, etc). The problem isn't even companies not contributing back changes (Apple does, for example), it is merely developers essentially working for multibillion companies "for free". Of course this is a problem that developers made for themselves and something that they were warned against but chose to ignore.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  I think that this is maybe mistaking why some developers create free software in the first place. Personally, it's not about money when I do it--for me it's about pushing humanity forward with new capabilities. So for me, the problem really is companies not contributing back changes. Even if companies use my software, I don't see it as me working for them for free, I see it as me working for humanity for free. That said, no free software I've ever written has ever gotten a significant user base, so perhaps my feelings would be different if I were a more successful free software developer.

lacker 7y ago

The missing open source funding is sitting in plain sight But these large companies do massively fund open source. They just do it by having their engineers create open source software, rather than paying money to independent engineers. Kubernetes, TypeScript, Go, Tensorflow, React, Angular, these open source libraries have had millions of dollars of engineer time put into them, and that cost was primarily paid by large tech companies.

benologist 7y ago
That's a tiny, luxurious little subset of open source. Open source is also 500,000 other projects being worked on in parallel from which FAANG are waiting to exploit anything of interest. Underneath their open source software is a chain of open source dependencies all the way down to the bare metal where the developers are not even considered.