4 ms·

I assume because donations would, ideally, be tax deductible through the company (or at least would have no personal tax repercussions) whereas making a donatio

I assume because donations would, ideally, be tax deductible through the company (or at least would have no personal tax repercussions) whereas making a donation of a gross cost of $1000 to an employee might mean only donating $500-600 net.

auggierose 4y ago
I am sure Google would be happy to deduct this from your salary and donate it instead.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  You are making some weird arguments in this thread. I don't understand how you think it's reasonable for employees to personally shoulder the burden of everything they use at work rather than work simply paying for it, which makes a lot more sense and is the way that things are typically done. Start deducting the cost of work tools from employee's salaries and suddenly your employees are going to become very inefficient at their jobs, as they won't want to spend their own money on anything.
  - harpersferry 4y ago
    Sure, from a strictly logical viewpoint you are correct. There is too much red tape and its really Google's problem to fix. And you giving $1000 wouldn't even solve the larger problem of Google not having a system for you to direct them to make the donations. But in both of those cases the project still doesn't have the $1000. You could always just give it to them, on average you'd hardly notice and you might even feel good about what you've done.
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      My overall political philosophy here is that individual elective donations solve few problems, and that large-scale collective action (whether by governments or large employers) is a much better solution overall. E.g. SNAP is a lot more effective and efficient at ensuring that people don't go hungry than relying on individual people to continuously choose to donate food/money. Same for this. One individual elective donation to an open source project doesn't do much. A larger system though can do a lot.
  - auggierose 4y ago
    Yes, my argument sounds weird. About as weird as Google paying for software they don't have to pay for. Maybe rephrasing my argument makes it more palatable to you: Shouldn't we, the guild of software engineers, take care of our own and pay our sub guild of open source developers? Why would we leave that to faceless companies?

auggierose 4y ago

I am sure Google would be happy to deduct this from your salary and donate it instead.

CydeWeys 4y ago
You are making some weird arguments in this thread. I don't understand how you think it's reasonable for employees to personally shoulder the burden of everything they use at work rather than work simply paying for it, which makes a lot more sense and is the way that things are typically done. Start deducting the cost of work tools from employee's salaries and suddenly your employees are going to become very inefficient at their jobs, as they won't want to spend their own money on anything.
- harpersferry 4y ago
  Sure, from a strictly logical viewpoint you are correct. There is too much red tape and its really Google's problem to fix. And you giving $1000 wouldn't even solve the larger problem of Google not having a system for you to direct them to make the donations. But in both of those cases the project still doesn't have the $1000. You could always just give it to them, on average you'd hardly notice and you might even feel good about what you've done.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    My overall political philosophy here is that individual elective donations solve few problems, and that large-scale collective action (whether by governments or large employers) is a much better solution overall. E.g. SNAP is a lot more effective and efficient at ensuring that people don't go hungry than relying on individual people to continuously choose to donate food/money. Same for this. One individual elective donation to an open source project doesn't do much. A larger system though can do a lot.
- auggierose 4y ago
  Yes, my argument sounds weird. About as weird as Google paying for software they don't have to pay for. Maybe rephrasing my argument makes it more palatable to you: Shouldn't we, the guild of software engineers, take care of our own and pay our sub guild of open source developers? Why would we leave that to faceless companies?