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> then there is a moral duty to help out (not a legal or license duty). May I invite you to descend off that hobby horse for a moment ? Let us perhaps replace

> then there is a moral duty to help out (not a legal or license duty). May I invite you to descend off that hobby horse for a moment ? Let us perhaps replace the word "Apple" with a variable parameter, say, $VERY_LARGE_CORPORATION Lets say you turn up at said $VERY_LARGE_CORPORATION and start talking to them about something wishy-washy, intangible and wholly subjective such as a "moral duty". You will be laughed out of the room. Once a company grows to a size where employees are measured in the tens or hundreds of thousands then it is simply impossible to get involved in edge-cases and subjective matters. Everything has to be defined and measurable because otherwise the whole caboodle descends into utter chaos very quickly.

nine_k 4y ago
Well, ignore "moral duty", it's just not a notion expressible in corp-speak. Take "good PR"; it's readily understandable. Why won't Apple, or any other company that won't mind spending $2k on good PR among the IT crowd, pick up the lead? Any PR department worth their free lattes should.
viraptor 4y ago
> You will be laughed out of the room. Let me introduce you to the group of companies that belong to https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/ They very much care about things like "moral duty". And there's more of those that aren't officially certified members.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > Let me introduce you to the group of companies that belong to https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/ Whilst I have heard of B Corporation, I will admit I don't know a great deal about it/them. However a brief look round their website suggests to me that what they do is basically structured ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). ESG is somewhat different to what we are talking about here. ESG has become a hot-topic in the corporate world, especially for listed companies where investors can now screen for companies based on ESG metrics. Over-simplified definition of ESG is treating your staff well (working conditions etc), treating your immediate community well (not polluting rivers etc) and contributing to good causes through corporate philanthropy. The whole point is ESG is about how corporations interact with the humans in their operational environment. BUT You cannot extrapolate ESG to open-source software, because ultimately, if you look at it through the corporate eye, software is software. And the corporate eye looks at software through the legal (licensing) lens, because that gives them something tangible and measurable to work with, which is the preferred modus-operandi of the corporate mind. Therefore if a piece of software is openly published with an extremely permissive license then you cannot blame the corporation for taking the path of least resistance (i.e. using it inline with the written terms of the license, which, depending on the license wording, could be little more than ensuring a credit is written in the correct places). Again, this comes down to the problem with scale. If you have tens of thousands of employees, software licensing is difficult, and if you had to "do deals" for each and every piece of open-source software then it would very quickly become unmanageable. Equally, a typical corporation with thousands of employees, could easily use thousands of pieces of open-source software. Because there is no price-tag on open-source software, you would then be in a position of having to engage in lengthly discussions that involve multiple departments in order to agree on what to pay each and every open-source developer. It all becomes very messy very quickly. Don't get me wrong, I see where you are coming from on this. But to be perfectly honest, OSS developers are not entirely without blame here. Sitting there, releasing code on an overly permissive license and then wondering why nobody is paying you .... it's sort of a case of dream life meeting harsh reality, really. OSS developers live in the wishy-washy world of subjective views and "moral duty". Corporations need standardisation and clarity because otherwise they descend into chaos. The easiest way to do that is through less-permissive licenses that have a clear requirement for remuneration. Otherwise, if you start talking about "donations" or anything else, then you start walking into that subjective ground again. And especially in terms of "donations", every man and his dog thinks corporates are "rich" and can afford to donate to their cause. So your request for "donations" will be lumped in the in-box along with everyone else's.
  - pabs3 4y ago
    Software is a lot more than software. Here is why open source should be part of the ESG calculations; because a random person from Nebraska maintains a critical dependency of some part of your stack and could get bored or worse. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ Thats just the easy obvious answer, there are other scenarios too, like a project changing direction making it less suitable for your use. Companies need to be active participants in and supporters of the OSS communities for the software they rely on.
fnord123 4y ago
If you work somewhere that you feel that talking about a "moral duty" would be laughed out of a room, please take a moment to consider whether you want to continue toiling for that organization. Look at the page for curl.se: Fastly is a sponsor. Look at sqlite's page: Bloomberg is a sponsor. Look at openssls page: nginx, Shiguredo, Activision, and Microsoft are sponsors.
- halJordan 4y ago
  All of those companies use all of those tools. Where js the indignation over them only supporting one? I posit that there either is no moral duty as supposed, or its been fulfilled by the single sponsorship. In which case Apple's open-source contributions have paid over their debt multiple times over.
  - fnord123 4y ago
    > Where js the indignation over them only supporting one Most of those companies sponsor many projects. > I posit that there either is no moral duty as supposed, or its been fulfilled by the single sponsorship Maybe but the issue in OP is that Apple has specific hardware requirements and various OSS developers are struggling to support M1 chips without paying out of pocket to support them. Whether it's moral or not, there is definitely a logistics issue between Apple and the very real and very important OSS communities.
Moissanite 4y ago
I agree with your assessment of the current state of things, but we shouldn't just accept that as the only option. Is it really too much to expect that the most senior engineers in a company could carve off a small portion of the marketing budget for "community good-will" and make small donations of platform credits (which cost close to zero) or cash? If each of the $100B+ tech companies put just $10M into open source with a bit of care, I wager they would make the money back in developer job satisfaction and evangelism alone.

nine_k 4y ago

Well, ignore "moral duty", it's just not a notion expressible in corp-speak. Take "good PR"; it's readily understandable. Why won't Apple, or any other company that won't mind spending $2k on good PR among the IT crowd, pick up the lead? Any PR department worth their free lattes should.

viraptor 4y ago

> You will be laughed out of the room. Let me introduce you to the group of companies that belong to https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/ They very much care about things like "moral duty". And there's more of those that aren't officially certified members.

traceroute66 4y ago
> Let me introduce you to the group of companies that belong to https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/ Whilst I have heard of B Corporation, I will admit I don't know a great deal about it/them. However a brief look round their website suggests to me that what they do is basically structured ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). ESG is somewhat different to what we are talking about here. ESG has become a hot-topic in the corporate world, especially for listed companies where investors can now screen for companies based on ESG metrics. Over-simplified definition of ESG is treating your staff well (working conditions etc), treating your immediate community well (not polluting rivers etc) and contributing to good causes through corporate philanthropy. The whole point is ESG is about how corporations interact with the humans in their operational environment. BUT You cannot extrapolate ESG to open-source software, because ultimately, if you look at it through the corporate eye, software is software. And the corporate eye looks at software through the legal (licensing) lens, because that gives them something tangible and measurable to work with, which is the preferred modus-operandi of the corporate mind. Therefore if a piece of software is openly published with an extremely permissive license then you cannot blame the corporation for taking the path of least resistance (i.e. using it inline with the written terms of the license, which, depending on the license wording, could be little more than ensuring a credit is written in the correct places). Again, this comes down to the problem with scale. If you have tens of thousands of employees, software licensing is difficult, and if you had to "do deals" for each and every piece of open-source software then it would very quickly become unmanageable. Equally, a typical corporation with thousands of employees, could easily use thousands of pieces of open-source software. Because there is no price-tag on open-source software, you would then be in a position of having to engage in lengthly discussions that involve multiple departments in order to agree on what to pay each and every open-source developer. It all becomes very messy very quickly. Don't get me wrong, I see where you are coming from on this. But to be perfectly honest, OSS developers are not entirely without blame here. Sitting there, releasing code on an overly permissive license and then wondering why nobody is paying you .... it's sort of a case of dream life meeting harsh reality, really. OSS developers live in the wishy-washy world of subjective views and "moral duty". Corporations need standardisation and clarity because otherwise they descend into chaos. The easiest way to do that is through less-permissive licenses that have a clear requirement for remuneration. Otherwise, if you start talking about "donations" or anything else, then you start walking into that subjective ground again. And especially in terms of "donations", every man and his dog thinks corporates are "rich" and can afford to donate to their cause. So your request for "donations" will be lumped in the in-box along with everyone else's.
- pabs3 4y ago
  Software is a lot more than software. Here is why open source should be part of the ESG calculations; because a random person from Nebraska maintains a critical dependency of some part of your stack and could get bored or worse. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ Thats just the easy obvious answer, there are other scenarios too, like a project changing direction making it less suitable for your use. Companies need to be active participants in and supporters of the OSS communities for the software they rely on.

fnord123 4y ago

If you work somewhere that you feel that talking about a "moral duty" would be laughed out of a room, please take a moment to consider whether you want to continue toiling for that organization. Look at the page for curl.se: Fastly is a sponsor. Look at sqlite's page: Bloomberg is a sponsor. Look at openssls page: nginx, Shiguredo, Activision, and Microsoft are sponsors.

halJordan 4y ago
All of those companies use all of those tools. Where js the indignation over them only supporting one? I posit that there either is no moral duty as supposed, or its been fulfilled by the single sponsorship. In which case Apple's open-source contributions have paid over their debt multiple times over.
- fnord123 4y ago
  > Where js the indignation over them only supporting one Most of those companies sponsor many projects. > I posit that there either is no moral duty as supposed, or its been fulfilled by the single sponsorship Maybe but the issue in OP is that Apple has specific hardware requirements and various OSS developers are struggling to support M1 chips without paying out of pocket to support them. Whether it's moral or not, there is definitely a logistics issue between Apple and the very real and very important OSS communities.

Moissanite 4y ago

I agree with your assessment of the current state of things, but we shouldn't just accept that as the only option. Is it really too much to expect that the most senior engineers in a company could carve off a small portion of the marketing budget for "community good-will" and make small donations of platform credits (which cost close to zero) or cash? If each of the $100B+ tech companies put just $10M into open source with a bit of care, I wager they would make the money back in developer job satisfaction and evangelism alone.