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My personal opinion is that money and open source should mix more. In the sense that more open source development should be done by salaried engineers, and espe

by zokier 2y ago

My personal opinion is that money and open source should mix more. In the sense that more open source development should be done by salaried engineers, and especially engineers whose salary is paid by the users of the software. Instead of donating money, companies should donate engineer hours. Shift the ownership from cathedralic upstreams to the user bazaars. The whole idea that projects would have semi-independent funding for development feels to me somewhat wrong. I'll admit this is idealistic view and not very actionable.

bunderbunder 2y ago
My concern is less about actionability and more about practicality. Money is fungible, so it's easier for the company to donate. Providing in-kind donations is more expensive for them because then they would need to hire people who have the right skills to contribute to that product, regardless of whether they have any independent need for that skill set. Money is fungible, so it's also easier for the project to work with. Need to shift some resources toward server hosting? Can't do that if your incoming donations are engineer-hours instead of money. Need to hire a lawyer because some patent troll is on your case? Too bad, no law firms are donating lawyer-hours this year. Need someone with skill in writing compilers? Too bad, the incoming donations are all time from front-end developers. The Cathedral and the Bazaar, for what it's worth, was not talking about funding models. It was talking about whether the general public is allowed to see development branches in real time and submit their own changes, or only gets to see source tarballs for official releases. Nowadays there are very few true "cathedral" projects that generally don't accept incoming patch submissions from the public. The most noteworthy one I can think of offhand is SQLite.
paulryanrogers 2y ago
This is at partially true for some projects isn't it? The Linux kernel is mostly paid work funded by individuals' employers.
- zokier 2y ago
  Yes and no. Yes, Linux kernel is good example of project where development is done by employees of various organizations. I'd argue that is big part why Linux kernel community is as healthy as it is. But also no, because so much of Linux development is driven by HW vendors (instead of direct users), and that is somewhat special situation. Although there is also good chunk of work done by organizations that directly use Linux, I don't want to dismiss that by any means.

by zokier 2y ago

bunderbunder 2y ago

My concern is less about actionability and more about practicality. Money is fungible, so it's easier for the company to donate. Providing in-kind donations is more expensive for them because then they would need to hire people who have the right skills to contribute to that product, regardless of whether they have any independent need for that skill set. Money is fungible, so it's also easier for the project to work with. Need to shift some resources toward server hosting? Can't do that if your incoming donations are engineer-hours instead of money. Need to hire a lawyer because some patent troll is on your case? Too bad, no law firms are donating lawyer-hours this year. Need someone with skill in writing compilers? Too bad, the incoming donations are all time from front-end developers. The Cathedral and the Bazaar, for what it's worth, was not talking about funding models. It was talking about whether the general public is allowed to see development branches in real time and submit their own changes, or only gets to see source tarballs for official releases. Nowadays there are very few true "cathedral" projects that generally don't accept incoming patch submissions from the public. The most noteworthy one I can think of offhand is SQLite.

paulryanrogers 2y ago

This is at partially true for some projects isn't it? The Linux kernel is mostly paid work funded by individuals' employers.

zokier 2y ago
Yes and no. Yes, Linux kernel is good example of project where development is done by employees of various organizations. I'd argue that is big part why Linux kernel community is as healthy as it is. But also no, because so much of Linux development is driven by HW vendors (instead of direct users), and that is somewhat special situation. Although there is also good chunk of work done by organizations that directly use Linux, I don't want to dismiss that by any means.