I'm amazed at the number of people praising Google, which is giving a comparatively small sum to a finished late stage project. Many core developers have given

I'm amazed at the number of people praising Google, which is giving a comparatively small sum to a finished late stage project. Many core developers have given an equivalent of that sum in free labor and receive no praise. On the contrary, a comment in this very thread accuses them of being "white males". Secondly, just "giving money to OSS" is meaningless. It depends on how it is used, who pulls the strings in the background and long term effects on the health of the volunteer part (who has done virtually all of the meaningful work in Python). People cite gcc and the Linux kernel. The situation is quite different. Sponsorship has started early by companies like SuSE, RedHat and Cygnus, who at the time were aligned with the original OSS values. The means of sponsorship was hiring top developers directly, bypassing foundations and councils. The is pretty different from the bureaucratic process that is being envisioned here.