5 ms·
$500k? When are they going to get serious?
by alttab 14y ago
$500k? When are they going to get serious?
- chj 14y agoLOL
- weixiyen 14y ago^this
- mturmon 14y agoWhere I work, that's almost enough to pay for two person years of work (inclusive of all overheads). In other words, it's pocket lint.
- brianobush 14y agofire those two lawyers and hire a gang of engineers.
- Rhino55 14y agoThat's a good idea for an OSS currency - lint. Just like bitcoins, but with some modifications. For example, Linus can print as much lint (Linus + Mint = Lint, get it?) coins as he wants. He can give them to whomever he wants, for example he can give some lint to his release manager, or he can "hire" some product people to talk with IBM and co about what features they want. As for the exchange rate, the holders of lint are under no obligation to sell it for any particular price, it is theirs. All of the transactions are public, so the total amount of outstanding lint is known at all times. A limit could be placed on the amount new lint per day.
- notatoad 14y agoYeah, it doesn't sound like a lot, but in terms of what the Linux Foundation actually does I think it's fairly significant. It is the price that the Linux Foundation has set for a platinum membership. If they needed more money, they could have priced it higher. Other than Linus, the linux foundation doesn't really pay developers. They are just an advisory and steering board, doing a bit of marketing. Samsung contributes much more directly by actually paying for Tizen OS development.
- cperciva 14y ago$500k is almost the entire budget of the FreeBSD Foundation. I don't know what the Linux Foundation spends money on, but the FreeBSD Foundation does great stuff with its money. And if you happen to have a "paltry" $500k sitting around, feel free to send it in FreeBSD's direction. :-)
- tlrobinson 14y agoThat may be enough to fund the FreeBSD or even Linux Foundation's budget, but is it enough to make a difference in competing with iOS?
- m_eiman 14y agoThe kernel is just a small part of the software on a phone, of corse, and likely not the crucial differentiator either. Don't forget that Samsung probably uses Linux in a lot of other products too, e.g. TVs.
- onedognight 14y ago> I don't know what the Linux Foundation spends money on At a minimum, Linus. What would you pay him? Edit: Interestingly he doesn't appear in the Linux Foundation's 990.
- truncate 14y agoAnd organizing worldwide/regional conferences and meetings maybe?
- kiiski 14y agoFrom reading http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/bylaws http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/bylaws, it seems that the $500k is the annual membership fee, not a single donation. Edit: As is also mentioned in the update to the article.
- Flenser 14y agoIndeed, FTA: "Platinum membership is $500,000 per year." "including fellow Platinum members IBM, Oracle, Intel, Fujitsu and Qualcomm Innovation Center" So Linux Foundation is getting at least 3MM USD per year now.
- kiiski 14y agohttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members 7 platinums * $500k = $3,5MM 15 golds * $100k = $1,5MM 110 silvers * between $5k and $20k = between $550k and $2,2MM Total = between 5,5MM and 7,2MM
- fpgeek 14y agoWell, they're more serious than Red Hat (Silver member), SUSE (Gold member) and Google (Gold member though currently doubled via Motorola). How much more serious do you want?
- ajross 14y agoTo be fair, that's "serious support of the Linux Foundation", not "serious support of Linux". As I'm sure you're aware, all three of those companies contribute vastly more to the open source community than their mere support of LF. LF pays for Linus and GregKH, and I'm sure a lot of other good work. It's hardly all of "Linux".
- hamidpalo 14y agoThis is my thinking too. $500k would cover about 2-2.5 developers at Apple/MSFT, and they have many many thousands working on their OSs.