3 ms·

Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it

42 points by rntn 2y ago

wrs 2y ago
The Olympics are primarily funded by advertising (and, very recently, streaming fees) and national/regional prestige. Neither sounds like a plausible source of open source funding.
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  A specific corporate tax would be a great way to do it, IMO. Companies that benefit should pay. How the money gets distributed, and to whom, is also a problem and I don't know how you make any of this cross national borders, especially given national security concerns.
  - nineteen999 2y ago
    > how you make any of this cross national borders yeah you can forget about that bit
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
klooney 2y ago
Very sensible, the EU does this to a limited extent.
- captn3m0 2y ago
  The EU Horizon grant (€27M or so) to NGI (which was how it went towards OSS) is being stopped from this year: https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240911-01.en.html https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240911-01.en.html
globular-toast 2y ago
At this point free software should be considered like the public highways. You benefit from it even if you don't drive.
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  From the government's perspective, public highways (in particular the interstate highway system in the U.S.) serve a crucial national security and logistics function. I think this might be the more convincing argument to governments--e.g. you run code in your systems that you do not have control over, and you don't know who is making contributions to it. They could be (and probably are) agents of foreign powers trying to hack you. But this raises other issues. Let's say you're the US Air Force and you want to sponsor SQLite. I assume because SQLite is everywhere the Air Force runs it in their airplanes, no idea if true. How do you make sure the interests of the developers are aligned with the interests of the Air Force? You probably don't want to accept contributions from foreign nationals, or at least nobody you can't hunt down and prosecute if they do something malicious. You probably also want to vet them with a thorough background check. So they basically have to be employees (or contractors). If you let your enemies build your highways they'll be hiding antitank mines everywhere. Should we be letting them build our software too? I can't imagine the Air Force, for example, saying "yes". But I could imagine them being quite interested in gaining this kind of control over their infrastructural dependencies.
paulddraper 2y ago
There's a system for that. It's called proprietary software
knowitnone 2y ago
OSS developers chose licenses that allow the world to use their software for free. They can change the license any time they want. What is needed is a license that is free for non-commercial/educational use and pay if revenue exceeds a certain number.
- growse 2y ago
  This has nothing to do with OSS developers being compensated, it's about risk management for the consumer. If you build your business on something that might disappear because someone decides to suddenly stop working on it, it's rational to incentivise them (or others) to not do that.
  - MrDarcy 2y ago
    Not do which? Build a business on OSS, or incentivize OSS maintainers to not disappear?
    - growse 2y ago
      The latter. Same is true of all business dependencies, not just OSS ones. It's a large reason why a lot of companies do M&A - it minimizes the risks of not having control over that dependency.
- neom 2y ago
  This is something Boris Mann has been talking about for a while now. https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-licensing/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-licensing/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-beyond-licensing-the-evolution-ahead/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-beyond-licensi... (I had mentioned to him I wanted the Canadian government to get involved in funding OSS, and that we needed a way for Canadians(and Canadian Corps) to use for free but everyone else would have to pay)
- elondaits 2y ago
  The problem with “non commercial” exceptions in FOSS licenses is that there’s no good definition of “non commercial”. Interpretations sometimes includes “anything that involves money / payments” even if that’s just distribution costs, someone’s salary, etc. And even if there’s no money, someone could be profiting indirectly. I work for a non profit that creates FOSS and we were explicitly prevented from using something published as CC-BY-SA-NC (by the author) because our completely “free to access” “not for profit” project was being developed by employees working for money (paid for by a private foundation). So what’s “non commercial”? Someone at home by themselves? What happens if they amass online followers and then monetize them somehow? They lose the license retroactively then? Was Linux non commercial when it began? (It should have been) Is it still non commercial? (Many would argue it isn’t).
andrewstuart 2y ago
A specific license might work requiring government users to pay.
- elondaits 2y ago
  Governments sometimes work around limitations by using private third parties that aren’t bound to them. e.g. if they had to pay to use httpd, they would just start paying a commercial hosting company that exists solely to provide http services to that government.
rspoerri 2y ago
If companies rely on FOSS, they should fund it.
- jarule 2y ago
  You've got it backwards. If a FOSS dev needs money, he should stop being FOSS. Don't throw your jacket on a puddle and expect the girl to put out.
edent 2y ago
I tried doing this when I worked in the UK government. It is a surprisingly hard problem. Firstly, lots of OSS doesn't have a well defined owner. So who gets the money? Do they actually want to take money from the "big bad state"? Is there a mechanism to pay them? If so, which budget does it come from? Government spending is heavily scrutinised. Why are we spending money on something that is "free"? What due diligence has been done? Should it be a competitive tender? It was sometimes possible to get round this. Pay for someone to speak at an internal event, buy a support package, pay for training etc. Governments (and most large orgs) just aren't set up to pay ad hoc amounts to non-suppliers, who aren't charging money.
mrzv 2y ago
Is there much work on valuation — or price discovery, I'm not sure what the right word is — for open-source software? If an entity wanted to fund its open-source supply chain, how would/should it allocate whatever it's willing to spend?
petermcneeley 2y ago
I think this is relevant to the issue Futo is trying to solve Futo license discussion: https://youtu.be/lCjy2CHP7zU https://youtu.be/lCjy2CHP7zU
fredski42 2y ago
To me FOSS is very much about governance. If you need a change in an existing piece of FOSS code you hire someone to do this, either in the project itself or, if the project or you doesn’t want that, in a fork. You can request the change in the existing project in exchange of money, but that to me is asking for trouble.
jarule 2y ago
This guy has no conception how government works. The Olympics is a sports franchise like any other, selling a brand name for advertising dollars.

42 points by rntn 2y ago

wrs 2y ago

The Olympics are primarily funded by advertising (and, very recently, streaming fees) and national/regional prestige. Neither sounds like a plausible source of open source funding.

jcgrillo 2y ago
A specific corporate tax would be a great way to do it, IMO. Companies that benefit should pay. How the money gets distributed, and to whom, is also a problem and I don't know how you make any of this cross national borders, especially given national security concerns.
- nineteen999 2y ago
  > how you make any of this cross national borders yeah you can forget about that bit

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

klooney 2y ago

Very sensible, the EU does this to a limited extent.

captn3m0 2y ago
The EU Horizon grant (€27M or so) to NGI (which was how it went towards OSS) is being stopped from this year: https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240911-01.en.html https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240911-01.en.html

globular-toast 2y ago

At this point free software should be considered like the public highways. You benefit from it even if you don't drive.

jcgrillo 2y ago
From the government's perspective, public highways (in particular the interstate highway system in the U.S.) serve a crucial national security and logistics function. I think this might be the more convincing argument to governments--e.g. you run code in your systems that you do not have control over, and you don't know who is making contributions to it. They could be (and probably are) agents of foreign powers trying to hack you. But this raises other issues. Let's say you're the US Air Force and you want to sponsor SQLite. I assume because SQLite is everywhere the Air Force runs it in their airplanes, no idea if true. How do you make sure the interests of the developers are aligned with the interests of the Air Force? You probably don't want to accept contributions from foreign nationals, or at least nobody you can't hunt down and prosecute if they do something malicious. You probably also want to vet them with a thorough background check. So they basically have to be employees (or contractors). If you let your enemies build your highways they'll be hiding antitank mines everywhere. Should we be letting them build our software too? I can't imagine the Air Force, for example, saying "yes". But I could imagine them being quite interested in gaining this kind of control over their infrastructural dependencies.

paulddraper 2y ago

There's a system for that. It's called proprietary software

knowitnone 2y ago

OSS developers chose licenses that allow the world to use their software for free. They can change the license any time they want. What is needed is a license that is free for non-commercial/educational use and pay if revenue exceeds a certain number.

growse 2y ago
This has nothing to do with OSS developers being compensated, it's about risk management for the consumer. If you build your business on something that might disappear because someone decides to suddenly stop working on it, it's rational to incentivise them (or others) to not do that.
- MrDarcy 2y ago
  Not do which? Build a business on OSS, or incentivize OSS maintainers to not disappear?
  - growse 2y ago
    The latter. Same is true of all business dependencies, not just OSS ones. It's a large reason why a lot of companies do M&A - it minimizes the risks of not having control over that dependency.
neom 2y ago
This is something Boris Mann has been talking about for a while now. https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-licensing/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-licensing/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-beyond-licensing-the-evolution-ahead/ https://bmannconsulting.com/notes/open-source-beyond-licensi... (I had mentioned to him I wanted the Canadian government to get involved in funding OSS, and that we needed a way for Canadians(and Canadian Corps) to use for free but everyone else would have to pay)
elondaits 2y ago
The problem with “non commercial” exceptions in FOSS licenses is that there’s no good definition of “non commercial”. Interpretations sometimes includes “anything that involves money / payments” even if that’s just distribution costs, someone’s salary, etc. And even if there’s no money, someone could be profiting indirectly. I work for a non profit that creates FOSS and we were explicitly prevented from using something published as CC-BY-SA-NC (by the author) because our completely “free to access” “not for profit” project was being developed by employees working for money (paid for by a private foundation). So what’s “non commercial”? Someone at home by themselves? What happens if they amass online followers and then monetize them somehow? They lose the license retroactively then? Was Linux non commercial when it began? (It should have been) Is it still non commercial? (Many would argue it isn’t).

andrewstuart 2y ago

A specific license might work requiring government users to pay.

elondaits 2y ago
Governments sometimes work around limitations by using private third parties that aren’t bound to them. e.g. if they had to pay to use httpd, they would just start paying a commercial hosting company that exists solely to provide http services to that government.

rspoerri 2y ago

If companies rely on FOSS, they should fund it.

jarule 2y ago
You've got it backwards. If a FOSS dev needs money, he should stop being FOSS. Don't throw your jacket on a puddle and expect the girl to put out.

edent 2y ago

I tried doing this when I worked in the UK government. It is a surprisingly hard problem. Firstly, lots of OSS doesn't have a well defined owner. So who gets the money? Do they actually want to take money from the "big bad state"? Is there a mechanism to pay them? If so, which budget does it come from? Government spending is heavily scrutinised. Why are we spending money on something that is "free"? What due diligence has been done? Should it be a competitive tender? It was sometimes possible to get round this. Pay for someone to speak at an internal event, buy a support package, pay for training etc. Governments (and most large orgs) just aren't set up to pay ad hoc amounts to non-suppliers, who aren't charging money.

mrzv 2y ago

Is there much work on valuation — or price discovery, I'm not sure what the right word is — for open-source software? If an entity wanted to fund its open-source supply chain, how would/should it allocate whatever it's willing to spend?

petermcneeley 2y ago

I think this is relevant to the issue Futo is trying to solve Futo license discussion: https://youtu.be/lCjy2CHP7zU https://youtu.be/lCjy2CHP7zU

fredski42 2y ago

To me FOSS is very much about governance. If you need a change in an existing piece of FOSS code you hire someone to do this, either in the project itself or, if the project or you doesn’t want that, in a fork. You can request the change in the existing project in exchange of money, but that to me is asking for trouble.

jarule 2y ago

This guy has no conception how government works. The Olympics is a sports franchise like any other, selling a brand name for advertising dollars.