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Perhaps something that's needed is suppliers you can pay to provide a warranty for open source, who share revenue with the relevant projects (with a corporate s

Perhaps something that's needed is suppliers you can pay to provide a warranty for open source, who share revenue with the relevant projects (with a corporate structure that guarantees this, some flavor of B corp). So I pay Foo, Foo pays Daniel, and Foo stays on top of curl's releases & makes sure that Daniel is getting the support he needs (putting out bounties or buying him a MacBook if he isn't) and that malicious code hasn't slipped into circulation. I'm just spitballing, I'm skeptical this would work, but if it were attempted, something critical would be it being a partnership and not that the supplier becomes the boss of the open source projects.

zokier 4y ago
While support contracts with RedHat/SuSE/etc do not go as far as take full liability, it is essentially their business model to take money from corps and funnel it into maintenance
hotpotamus 4y ago
That sounds more or less like Red Hat (I suppose now IBM). I don't entirely know the ecosystem, but I believe they give some money to the Keycloak project (which my company uses). I'm sure they sponsor others, but I assume the main contribution is developers - if you look at commits on the average project github, there's a good chance Red Hat will be well represented, and for core Linux components, they'll probably be at the top. Intel will also have a significant presence. Sun was big on this back in the day as well.
di4na 4y ago
This is basically what Tidelift does. I personally think that the solution is more in line of something like https://sovereigntechfund.de/ https://sovereigntechfund.de/, where taxes pay for support of what is fundamentally infrastructure
- wardedVibe 4y ago
  Ideally we'd have something like quadratic funding[0] as the means of choosing where to spend that fund, so that we get optimal contributions from private funds as well. In general, software should be treated like a public resource, since the marginal cost of distribution is ~0, and restricting distribution frequently requires a lot of effort. [0]:https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html
indymike 4y ago
Warranty on software? I’m trying to say something profound but I keep uncontrollably laughing.
- maxbond 4y ago
  Glad I could give you a laugh! It brings me joy to bring joy to others. Have a great new years.
  - indymike 4y ago
    Thanks. I think the supply chain may be too long and filled with unwarrantable code to be able to actually have real warranties.

zokier 4y ago

While support contracts with RedHat/SuSE/etc do not go as far as take full liability, it is essentially their business model to take money from corps and funnel it into maintenance

hotpotamus 4y ago

That sounds more or less like Red Hat (I suppose now IBM). I don't entirely know the ecosystem, but I believe they give some money to the Keycloak project (which my company uses). I'm sure they sponsor others, but I assume the main contribution is developers - if you look at commits on the average project github, there's a good chance Red Hat will be well represented, and for core Linux components, they'll probably be at the top. Intel will also have a significant presence. Sun was big on this back in the day as well.

di4na 4y ago

This is basically what Tidelift does. I personally think that the solution is more in line of something like https://sovereigntechfund.de/ https://sovereigntechfund.de/, where taxes pay for support of what is fundamentally infrastructure

wardedVibe 4y ago
Ideally we'd have something like quadratic funding[0] as the means of choosing where to spend that fund, so that we get optimal contributions from private funds as well. In general, software should be treated like a public resource, since the marginal cost of distribution is ~0, and restricting distribution frequently requires a lot of effort. [0]:https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html

indymike 4y ago

Warranty on software? I’m trying to say something profound but I keep uncontrollably laughing.

maxbond 4y ago
Glad I could give you a laugh! It brings me joy to bring joy to others. Have a great new years.
- indymike 4y ago
  Thanks. I think the supply chain may be too long and filled with unwarrantable code to be able to actually have real warranties.