8 ms·

Funding Open Source like public infrastructure

265 points by pabs3 1y ago

flowerthoughts 1y ago
Perhaps make open source work tax deductible, just like charity donations?
- chii 1y ago
  but what would be the deducted amount, in dollar value, when the work is voluntary? Do you get assigned a dollar value per line, per hour worked, or you just guestimate?
- tgma 1y ago
  Isn't it already? You deduct the salary expense from your corporate profits.
sirwitti 1y ago
Just in case people don't realize, the author is Dries Buytaert who created drupal.
- sam_lowry_ 1y ago
  Once successful PHP-based CMS that succumbed to in-fighting, poor code and excessive drug use among its top proponents?
  - sirwitti 1y ago
    Why once successful? But more importantly, tell me more about the scandals, I love good gossip :)
    - wltr 1y ago
      Does anyone work with it these days? I haven’t heard of it for like a decade or two. Truly curious what’s up with it. As honestly, I thought php is long dead, but it looks like it isn’t. I remember WordPress as a much better alternative (in my humble opinion), but perhaps someone still uses it somewhere and can comment. Would really love to learn the state of Drupal in 2025.
tgma 1y ago
I would be much more excited in finding ways to fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime rather than going the other way around. If anything, academic open source which is the closest alternative has not really produced much and the production open source that actually works is by and large corporate-sponsored. P.S. The article also opens by contrasting open source consumption and contribution. In a certain sense, as the article acknowledges later, I care much much more about government consuming free software, as a neutral platform to avoid lock-in for themselves and the taxpayer, as well as providing an open foundation for integration and letting people use free software if they choose to (and not lock them to iOS and Android, for instance.) That alone is one of the biggest ways they can contribute. The actual code contribution will come naturally if they do that.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  > fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this?
  - tgma 1y ago
    A capitalist institution, in this case Amazon, charges some basic tax for providing basic services, e.g. package delivery, that have overlap with traditionally public infrastructure, but executes at a higher quality. One could imagine something like RedHat or a quasi-coop Apache Foundation that actually employs high-quality people and pays them to develop code and sells subscription/support.
- e40 1y ago
  Generally the people working on academic oss have other incentives (degree, research) and they are often on the inexperienced side. If it was a primary function and was staffed independently of educational programs, it could work and be a great teaching tool for actual students.
  - graemep 1y ago
    Research is not carried out by the inexperienced!
Woodi 1y ago
yes, yes, everybody know that now... but software is just not-a-base thing - it needs cpu's, computers. If you want realy independence do base thing - computer hardware ! Make small hardware that just can run Linux, can display things and use keyboard and mouse... Do eg. Dennmark do this ? Or Bosh ? Or... Computers just to connect to internet and send some messages via IRC or something... ;)
vitonsky 1y ago
One yet another narrative that claim all people owe to an open source. I believe, once in deep future, an open source developers will grown and stop repeating this sectarian mantra. No one owes you anything. If you do opensource and you need in money - use your open source as marketing tool to promote services you sell. It's simple as 2+2, I've mention it in my blog post https://vitonsky.net/blog/2025/06/24/open-source/ https://vitonsky.net/blog/2025/06/24/open-source/ I think those who believe a companies will pay to you for a random OSS is just a kids. Ask people who can use a sheets, they explain you why your product will die with this approach.
- squigz 1y ago
  Quite literally the entire world owes a lot to open source, as countless open source projects power IT globally.
  - vitonsky 1y ago
    How exactly this vision will make money for you? Currently it sounds you just a kid who want to be paid. Is there anything more except "you all owe to me" in this claim?
    - squigz 1y ago
      Quite interesting that I didn't mention money, but that seems to be the only language many people speak. Anyway, maybe go ask the Blender folks (and I'm quite sure others can provide some more examples) Also, please read the HN guidelines [0] > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. You don't know anything about me, including my age, nor my motivations or history. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    A society would owe something to person picking up trash in their free time. But I am pretty sure society will never end up paying even minimum wage for that labour... It is similar to open source... Something has value and is good for society, but society neither has willingness or ways to reward it.
pacifika 1y ago
Good article. Could come across a bit like an unintentional bait and switch from the other point of view though, these projects love to see adoption but then require funding to maintain? Maybe setting the project up more commercially that then self funds the open source platform like Laravel is a more sustainable model?
securesaml 1y ago
I agree that open source infrastructure needs to be funded. I think first there needs to be a mindset shift in who's responsible for open source. Currently when new vulnerabilities pop up (i.e. xz-utils compromise, log4j shell), people are quick to blame the maintainers for it. Why shouldn't companies instead be responsible for these vulnerabilities? Currently, companies treat open source code as someone else's, so they don't bother to audit, maintain it, or fund it. Clearly, this is wrong, and reflected in the oss license, which states that code is solely consumer's responsibility.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- pabs3 1y ago
  The EU CRA law is going to fix that, companies will responsible for the open source code in the products they sell.
  - pkaye 1y ago
    What are the penalties? Will they crack down on the buggy WiFi routers which often times have open source software that they never maintain? Also I see this as a benefit for the major commercial Linux Distribution like Red Hat, Ubuntu and maybe SuSe because small companies can't provide that level of assurance.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      Found a FAQ about it: "Failure to comply with vulnerability reporting, cyber incident reporting, or essential cybersecurity requirements could trigger administrative fines of up to €15 million or 2.5% of global turnover. Other obligations include €10 million or 2% of global turnover." https://www.windriver.com/resource/eu-cyber-resilience-act-faq https://www.windriver.com/resource/eu-cyber-resilience-act-f... Also more details in this one: https://codific.com/cra-fines/ https://codific.com/cra-fines/ Apart from fines, "Beyond financial penalties, non-compliant products may also be prohibited or restricted from being made available on the EU market, or authorities may order their withdrawal or recall. This can lead to significant reputational damage and loss of market access."
fennecfoxy 1y ago
The public barely want to fund public infrastructure, for the electricity they use, the water they drink. And especially not for the electricity and water that their neighbours, or people across town, or people somewhere else in the country need.
- kruffalon 1y ago
  Yes we do, who do you think is "the public"? Most people like working societies and a huge part of that is reliable infrastructure.
  - fennecfoxy 1y ago
    Lmao, so you're telling me that you think the majority of people if asked "you can have a good chunk of your taxes back, and you'll now only pay for just your area and not for the whole country's infrastructure" wouldn't say "fuck yes I want more money back!" If you don't believe that's true then I'm afraid you don't know human beings. Just because _you_ do, doesn't mean _everyone_ does.
  - graemep 1y ago
    I think it is an illusion created by people rich enough to pay for things themselves. it is easy for those with the loudest voices to pass as "the public".
    - kruffalon 1y ago
      I'm guessing more like people who think they are rich enough to pay for it themselves. My guess is that real rich people love public funded stuff as it's basically free for them.
- Fomite 1y ago
  This was my thought. "...like public infrastructure" means underfunding and neglect.
  - 9dev 1y ago
Podrod 1y ago
[dead]
zihotki 1y ago
Quite often the public infrastructure (at least in some EU countries) is funded in the way so that the investors give the funds and then a small fee is collected and used to pay for the loan and maintenance. Sometimes after the loan is fully paid the infra usage fees are waived. This is something like commercial open source
maelito 1y ago
It's hard to count but my guess is that in France, the French government is the main creator of open-source software in France. Contribution to existing projects lacks behind, but it's getting better.
zoobab 1y ago
The money of running Linux in government is probably already flowing to the US, in the pockets of Redhat and IBM.
frankdejonge 1y ago
I’ve given up on hopes of having funding on open source. My open source packages account for about 1.2% of all PHP code downloaded from Packagist (package manager) but unless there is a commercial effort behind it, I do not see it happening. A couple devs in highly hyped companies is able to generate a following big enough to solicit some non trivial amount of funding but the majority just doesn’t care enough about it to fund it. In the end, is open source maintainers are stupid enough to give our code away for free, so who’s really to blame for this. Perhaps it’s an overly pessimistic view, but not a view that has historically been disproven.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  MIT is pumped to enable current ecosystem, precisely. Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable. GPL & AGPL is effective against that, but companies are afraid of it since it tells "code is a collaborative effort, and you have to share what you did with the code". Because of this, I share most of the code I write for myself, and strictly use (A)GPLv3 as a license. I don't care what companies do or what riches I possibly ignore. My principles are not for sale. Being responsible generates no value for the shareholders. Being able to be reckless and ignore everyone while making business is. Don't get distracted. It's about monies.
  - securesaml 1y ago
    > Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable. I think that this is an accurate description of working relationship. But, the fine print (MIT license) explicitly says that the companies are responsible: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      That line allows shifting the blame upstream without any friction. Exhibit A: Company X uses library Y by Mr. Z., which is used by another 100 or so companies. Mr. Z. is happy because he's quasi-famous because of all the exposure. A bug has been found in Y by users of Company X, which is not interested in fixing it. - Users: Hey Company X, this feature provided by libY is broken. - Company X: This makes us lose money, but it's complicated. Tell Mr. Z. - Mr. Z: There's no warranty whatsoever. - Company X: You either fix it, or we spread the word that you're irresponsible and everyone will inevitably migrate to libW. - Mr. Z: OK. Lemme look at that. Mr Z. drops everything, fixes problem, maybe gets a Thanks!, and might feel better. Company X and other hundred gets free labor for their problems, and one person burns out. Why? Because nobody tried to understand how GPL works, and companies said MIT or no cookie points anyway. So, another developer is bought with hope vapor. He gets nothing in the end, while the company is printing money in two ways by not buying an expensive library and selling its capabilities. Edit: One Daniel Stenberg of curl:// has dropped this: https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115025727082593712 https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115025727082593712 Another (good) write up from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-projects-are-you-currently-activity-7361650475059818497-fhkA/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-pr...
mhh__ 1y ago
Governments should do this, but as a but as a way to create value and do things that are strategic but not locally optimal. Not just because some lawyer writes in some extra funding for ffmpeg (or whatever). Small teams making software to solve problems, and then gradually aiming to hire for end users to be able to code (this is a good way of achieving the "less people, higher salaries" dream) If we treat it as infra then I fear slightly that we'd end up like the Victorian to modern transition where the idea of public infrastructure being run by the people who built lots of it in the first place is unimaginable i.e. Britain's railways and many roads were built to make money, but we are now (I'd argue) so risk adverse and allergic to prices being allowed to signal anything that we would never actually allow this to happen now.
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
There's precedent for this type of thing in the EU. They sponsor(ed?) the bug bounty program for VLC Media Player[0] for example, among a few other OSS projects. [0] - https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/vlc-patches-critical-flaws-through-eu-open-source-bug-bounty-program https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/vlc-patches-critical-flaw...
opendomain 1y ago
I agree completely. 20 years ago I gave Dries the domain Drupal.com for free to support open source. I recently gave the domain MrBeast.org to Beast Philanthropy. But more important than Open Source is Freedom. I recently acquired the domain antifascist.org to fight the rise of fascism. This will be a website to share information on protecting your loved ones - it will be open source in that everyone can contribute. I welcome anyone that wants to help - send an email or use the contact form on the website.
- opendomain 1y ago
  I forgot to mention - I won the lottery! I won the 2nd prize of the recent Powerball - $50,000 and I am donating it to the new AntiFascist foundation. I am NOT rich. This money could have a significant impact on my life. But I wanted to help others and so I am showing my commitment to fight for Freedom. I have run OpenDomain for 25 years and have contributed domains to Open Source worth millions all for Free. I am ending that project to fight the rise of fascism. I welcome ANY help or criticism - https://Antifascist.org https://Antifascist.org
  - addandsubtract 1y ago
    That sounds really great, but right now the site is still 80% template text/pages. I'll check back and make a donation once it's ready and lists the non-profit receiving the money.
    - opendomain 1y ago
      That is awesome! We have registered as a non-profit as “AntiFascist Foundation” and should finalize our paperwork this week. Please note that since the goal is social activism, we are a 501c4 and donations may not be tax deductible. We also would love any help on the design or messaging - any help would be greatly appreciated. Contact me and you can be part of the project
  - Den_VR 1y ago
    This might seem like a ridiculous question but, exactly what do you consider fascism?
jph 1y ago
I lead open source projects for the United Kingdom National Health Service, specifically for NHS Wales Digital Health and Care. The UK is investing significantly in open source and publishing widely about the importance of open source. https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/ If you're technical and curious, I'm currently porting the UK NHS design system from Nunjucks to more implementations, including vanilla HTML CSS TypeScript, and my personal favorite Svelte Tailwind Daisy UI. Claude Code is churning on it right now. https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/public-good-design-system https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/public-good-design-sy... AMA. And we're hiring. Feel free to message me.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Are you hiring in the UK exclusively?
  - jph 1y ago
    Yes because the work includes frequent in-person teamwork.
- maelito 1y ago
  Similar to what the French gov does with its DSFR, Design System FR. React implementation : https://github.com/codegouvfr/react-dsfr https://github.com/codegouvfr/react-dsfr Main website : https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/version-courante/fr https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/version-courante/fr
  - jph 1y ago
    Yes with a twist: the French government design system is purposefully reserved for the use of French government websites. I believe that a great design system will be flexible and more akin to user principles first, then implementation interface components (e.g. we need 200 or so components for one of our medical apps), then skinning such as look and feel and themeing. As one example I'm very keen on coding techniques such headless components as by Bits UI which provides headless components for Svelte. If anyone here wants paid work to code components like these by Bits UI, come work with us. <3
didgetmaster 1y ago
Careful what you wish for. Government funding almost always comes with strings attached. Once a project becomes dependent on government, they will call the shots. Do what they want or get your funds yanked! This could include stuff like coding back doors for the NSA or implementing spyware.
- nordcikmgsdf 1y ago
  Isn't that how it works now too? Contributors are often contracted companies that develop features that they upstream. If you don't do what the company tells you, you won't be able to upstream any features on their dime
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- teppix 1y ago
  Like already mentioned, this is not in any way unique to open source software. On the contrary, being open source adds the opportunity to understand what the software does on a deeper level, and you can always fork (Librewolf is one of many examples that comes to mind). Do you have any examples where large entities taking over open source project having lead to the project's total demise? This sort of thing happens all the time the in the commercial space. It of course also happens to some extent to open source projects, but usually that results in forks if the demand is high enough. For commercial software, you don't have many options - especially for subscription based licensing, which is pretty much the norm nowadays.
  - didgetmaster 1y ago
    I was not suggesting that demands from those paying the bills does not happen in proprietary software or that big companies don't do the same for open source projects today. The article was written as if there are no downsides to government supported open source projects. I just wanted to point one out.
SkipperCat 1y ago
Isn't this what the "Freemium" model is supposed to resolve? If a open source package is popular, people will build businesses around it and people who use it can then purchase support and get bonus features. This allows the marketplace to determine which project get supported rather than bureaucratic decree.
- securesaml 1y ago
  It's usually the more user-facing products that can thrive on this freemium model (probably full web apps or a lot of code). For example, laravel might get a lot of funding from this. However, the underlying infrastructure libraries, will not get any funding from this, even though they have much more users. For example, libxml2, xzutils, http parser ... You can't build any product off of an infrastructure library, purchasing support doesn't make sense, and there are little bonus features to be made. One way to remedy this, is to have well funded open source projects take ownership of its dependencies.
kindkang2024 1y ago
Perhaps open source should update its license so that businesses profiting from it contribute a small portion of their earnings — say, 1% — to a global fund, whether allocated specifically to the open source maintainers and contributors or to the Decentralized Universal Kindness Income (DUKI /djuːki/) for all lives worldwide. Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.
- pabs3 1y ago
  That wouldn't be compliant with the Open Source Definition, it says no discrimination against people, groups or fields of endeavour. https://opensourcedefinition.org/ https://opensourcedefinition.org/
  - kindkang2024 1y ago
    Thanks for the kind reminder. After reviewing the definition and interacting with an AI, I see that it does indeed exclude this type of use. However, I feel these definitions create unnecessary divisions and discrimination. It seems unfair to projects with open source code under non-standard licenses, as they are prevented from using the term that aligns with how most people worldwide perceive it. The definition has also effectively made an enemy of money, which may be the root reason the author advocates for funding open source like public infrastructure. Personally, I wish “Open Source” could simply reflect its literal meaning—the one that most people perceive: that the source is open for any purpose, provided the specified rules are met. In my view, as long as the rules set by the maintainers apply to everyone equally, they do not constitute discrimination. You just have to follow the rules of the game if you want to play.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      That sounds like what the Open Source Definition does.
      - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bdcravens 1y ago
In some places, funding public infrastructure like public infrastructure has barely proven to be successful and sustainable. Some places are underfunded, and it shows, and other places are well-funded but in crippling debt.
mlinksva 1y ago
Fairly comprehensive and good blog post. Possibly too new to make it in, a proposal to take the learnings of the German STF (mentioned in the post) and expand it to the EU level for the next budget cycle (2028-2035) https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/ https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/
ongytenes 1y ago
I would be concerned how a future government would want to regulate open source if they took it over.
pabs3 1y ago
Some resources on funding open source here: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
tempeler 1y ago
To support open source projects and developers, a GitHub-like platform managed by a nonprofit organization should be established, and it should issue its own token. Similarly, a fair system that distributes these tokens according to developers’ contributions would be much more appropriate.
fontsgenerator 1y ago
Treating open source as public infrastructure makes sense—so many critical projects run on volunteer labor, yet the whole ecosystem depends on them.
globalgeek 1y ago
[dead]
callamdelaney 1y ago
If it's anything like hs2, we'll hire thousands of consultants on huge day rates who have zero incentive to ever build anything. Not an ideal model for open source funding.
sharts 1y ago
I’m kinda surprised we still don’t have publicly funded and run cloud yet and really only available in the academic settings if you’re affiliated with a university or research lab (and even then each of those have their own spins with lots of duplication). Some of these decentralized and open source projects (eg gridcoin.us, or golem.network and akash.network) seem like interesting ideas that would benefit with a public/private incentive system too. Perhaps giving some finite compute to experiment with at little to no cost. Others can donate or are incentivized to provide unused compute. There’s so much unused / underutilized resources out there that it would be a great boon to somehow make that available and further reduce barriers to entry. Aside from that it’s just a really interesting problem that intersects a lot of different areas.
throwmeaway222 1y ago
libraries are going away in favor of coding up the entire stack without libraries using agents
mrbluecoat 1y ago
> 96% of that $8.8 trillion depends on just 5% of contributors I have so much respect for the selfless 5%
xpe 1y ago
There’s a big difference between e.g. a public water utility and clean air (a textbook public good). The latter is non-excludable. Open source can use ways to encourage donations and participation: one good way is adding some form of excitability. This could mean: - increased access or influence over the project management and/or timeline - increased access to the core team for troubleshooting, debugging, etc - co-branding - white labeling (maybe?) - and so on
EarlKing 1y ago
The average developer, whether of open source or otherwise, refuses to use even the bare minimum of engineering discipline in realizing their programs, thereby resulting in an explosion of bugs that the rest of us have to pay for with our time, effort, and sanity.... and they want taxpayer money for that? HOW ABOUT NO. And don't tell me things would be different if we paid them since commercial software developers are certainly incentivized to do things properly and they STILL refuse to use proper engineering practices.

265 points by pabs3 1y ago

flowerthoughts 1y ago

Perhaps make open source work tax deductible, just like charity donations?

chii 1y ago
but what would be the deducted amount, in dollar value, when the work is voluntary? Do you get assigned a dollar value per line, per hour worked, or you just guestimate?
tgma 1y ago
Isn't it already? You deduct the salary expense from your corporate profits.

sirwitti 1y ago

Just in case people don't realize, the author is Dries Buytaert who created drupal.

sam_lowry_ 1y ago
Once successful PHP-based CMS that succumbed to in-fighting, poor code and excessive drug use among its top proponents?
- sirwitti 1y ago
  Why once successful? But more importantly, tell me more about the scandals, I love good gossip :)
  - wltr 1y ago
    Does anyone work with it these days? I haven’t heard of it for like a decade or two. Truly curious what’s up with it. As honestly, I thought php is long dead, but it looks like it isn’t. I remember WordPress as a much better alternative (in my humble opinion), but perhaps someone still uses it somewhere and can comment. Would really love to learn the state of Drupal in 2025.

tgma 1y ago

I would be much more excited in finding ways to fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime rather than going the other way around. If anything, academic open source which is the closest alternative has not really produced much and the production open source that actually works is by and large corporate-sponsored. P.S. The article also opens by contrasting open source consumption and contribution. In a certain sense, as the article acknowledges later, I care much much more about government consuming free software, as a neutral platform to avoid lock-in for themselves and the taxpayer, as well as providing an open foundation for integration and letting people use free software if they choose to (and not lock them to iOS and Android, for instance.) That alone is one of the biggest ways they can contribute. The actual code contribution will come naturally if they do that.

JimDabell 1y ago
> fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this?
- tgma 1y ago
  A capitalist institution, in this case Amazon, charges some basic tax for providing basic services, e.g. package delivery, that have overlap with traditionally public infrastructure, but executes at a higher quality. One could imagine something like RedHat or a quasi-coop Apache Foundation that actually employs high-quality people and pays them to develop code and sells subscription/support.
e40 1y ago
Generally the people working on academic oss have other incentives (degree, research) and they are often on the inexperienced side. If it was a primary function and was staffed independently of educational programs, it could work and be a great teaching tool for actual students.
- graemep 1y ago
  Research is not carried out by the inexperienced!

Woodi 1y ago

yes, yes, everybody know that now... but software is just not-a-base thing - it needs cpu's, computers. If you want realy independence do base thing - computer hardware ! Make small hardware that just can run Linux, can display things and use keyboard and mouse... Do eg. Dennmark do this ? Or Bosh ? Or... Computers just to connect to internet and send some messages via IRC or something... ;)

vitonsky 1y ago

One yet another narrative that claim all people owe to an open source. I believe, once in deep future, an open source developers will grown and stop repeating this sectarian mantra. No one owes you anything. If you do opensource and you need in money - use your open source as marketing tool to promote services you sell. It's simple as 2+2, I've mention it in my blog post https://vitonsky.net/blog/2025/06/24/open-source/ https://vitonsky.net/blog/2025/06/24/open-source/ I think those who believe a companies will pay to you for a random OSS is just a kids. Ask people who can use a sheets, they explain you why your product will die with this approach.

squigz 1y ago
Quite literally the entire world owes a lot to open source, as countless open source projects power IT globally.
- vitonsky 1y ago
  How exactly this vision will make money for you? Currently it sounds you just a kid who want to be paid. Is there anything more except "you all owe to me" in this claim?
  - squigz 1y ago
    Quite interesting that I didn't mention money, but that seems to be the only language many people speak. Anyway, maybe go ask the Blender folks (and I'm quite sure others can provide some more examples) Also, please read the HN guidelines [0] > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. You don't know anything about me, including my age, nor my motivations or history. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Ekaros 1y ago
  A society would owe something to person picking up trash in their free time. But I am pretty sure society will never end up paying even minimum wage for that labour... It is similar to open source... Something has value and is good for society, but society neither has willingness or ways to reward it.

pacifika 1y ago

Good article. Could come across a bit like an unintentional bait and switch from the other point of view though, these projects love to see adoption but then require funding to maintain? Maybe setting the project up more commercially that then self funds the open source platform like Laravel is a more sustainable model?

securesaml 1y ago

I agree that open source infrastructure needs to be funded. I think first there needs to be a mindset shift in who's responsible for open source. Currently when new vulnerabilities pop up (i.e. xz-utils compromise, log4j shell), people are quick to blame the maintainers for it. Why shouldn't companies instead be responsible for these vulnerabilities? Currently, companies treat open source code as someone else's, so they don't bother to audit, maintain it, or fund it. Clearly, this is wrong, and reflected in the oss license, which states that code is solely consumer's responsibility.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pabs3 1y ago
The EU CRA law is going to fix that, companies will responsible for the open source code in the products they sell.
- pkaye 1y ago
  What are the penalties? Will they crack down on the buggy WiFi routers which often times have open source software that they never maintain? Also I see this as a benefit for the major commercial Linux Distribution like Red Hat, Ubuntu and maybe SuSe because small companies can't provide that level of assurance.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    Found a FAQ about it: "Failure to comply with vulnerability reporting, cyber incident reporting, or essential cybersecurity requirements could trigger administrative fines of up to €15 million or 2.5% of global turnover. Other obligations include €10 million or 2% of global turnover." https://www.windriver.com/resource/eu-cyber-resilience-act-faq https://www.windriver.com/resource/eu-cyber-resilience-act-f... Also more details in this one: https://codific.com/cra-fines/ https://codific.com/cra-fines/ Apart from fines, "Beyond financial penalties, non-compliant products may also be prohibited or restricted from being made available on the EU market, or authorities may order their withdrawal or recall. This can lead to significant reputational damage and loss of market access."

fennecfoxy 1y ago

The public barely want to fund public infrastructure, for the electricity they use, the water they drink. And especially not for the electricity and water that their neighbours, or people across town, or people somewhere else in the country need.

kruffalon 1y ago
Yes we do, who do you think is "the public"? Most people like working societies and a huge part of that is reliable infrastructure.
- fennecfoxy 1y ago
  Lmao, so you're telling me that you think the majority of people if asked "you can have a good chunk of your taxes back, and you'll now only pay for just your area and not for the whole country's infrastructure" wouldn't say "fuck yes I want more money back!" If you don't believe that's true then I'm afraid you don't know human beings. Just because _you_ do, doesn't mean _everyone_ does.
- graemep 1y ago
  I think it is an illusion created by people rich enough to pay for things themselves. it is easy for those with the loudest voices to pass as "the public".
  - kruffalon 1y ago
    I'm guessing more like people who think they are rich enough to pay for it themselves. My guess is that real rich people love public funded stuff as it's basically free for them.
Fomite 1y ago
This was my thought. "...like public infrastructure" means underfunding and neglect.
- 9dev 1y ago

Podrod 1y ago

[dead]

zihotki 1y ago

Quite often the public infrastructure (at least in some EU countries) is funded in the way so that the investors give the funds and then a small fee is collected and used to pay for the loan and maintenance. Sometimes after the loan is fully paid the infra usage fees are waived. This is something like commercial open source

maelito 1y ago

It's hard to count but my guess is that in France, the French government is the main creator of open-source software in France. Contribution to existing projects lacks behind, but it's getting better.

zoobab 1y ago

The money of running Linux in government is probably already flowing to the US, in the pockets of Redhat and IBM.

frankdejonge 1y ago

I’ve given up on hopes of having funding on open source. My open source packages account for about 1.2% of all PHP code downloaded from Packagist (package manager) but unless there is a commercial effort behind it, I do not see it happening. A couple devs in highly hyped companies is able to generate a following big enough to solicit some non trivial amount of funding but the majority just doesn’t care enough about it to fund it. In the end, is open source maintainers are stupid enough to give our code away for free, so who’s really to blame for this. Perhaps it’s an overly pessimistic view, but not a view that has historically been disproven.

bayindirh 1y ago
MIT is pumped to enable current ecosystem, precisely. Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable. GPL & AGPL is effective against that, but companies are afraid of it since it tells "code is a collaborative effort, and you have to share what you did with the code". Because of this, I share most of the code I write for myself, and strictly use (A)GPLv3 as a license. I don't care what companies do or what riches I possibly ignore. My principles are not for sale. Being responsible generates no value for the shareholders. Being able to be reckless and ignore everyone while making business is. Don't get distracted. It's about monies.
- securesaml 1y ago
  > Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable. I think that this is an accurate description of working relationship. But, the fine print (MIT license) explicitly says that the companies are responsible: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    That line allows shifting the blame upstream without any friction. Exhibit A: Company X uses library Y by Mr. Z., which is used by another 100 or so companies. Mr. Z. is happy because he's quasi-famous because of all the exposure. A bug has been found in Y by users of Company X, which is not interested in fixing it. - Users: Hey Company X, this feature provided by libY is broken. - Company X: This makes us lose money, but it's complicated. Tell Mr. Z. - Mr. Z: There's no warranty whatsoever. - Company X: You either fix it, or we spread the word that you're irresponsible and everyone will inevitably migrate to libW. - Mr. Z: OK. Lemme look at that. Mr Z. drops everything, fixes problem, maybe gets a Thanks!, and might feel better. Company X and other hundred gets free labor for their problems, and one person burns out. Why? Because nobody tried to understand how GPL works, and companies said MIT or no cookie points anyway. So, another developer is bought with hope vapor. He gets nothing in the end, while the company is printing money in two ways by not buying an expensive library and selling its capabilities. Edit: One Daniel Stenberg of curl:// has dropped this: https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115025727082593712 https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115025727082593712 Another (good) write up from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-projects-are-you-currently-activity-7361650475059818497-fhkA/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-pr...

mhh__ 1y ago

Governments should do this, but as a but as a way to create value and do things that are strategic but not locally optimal. Not just because some lawyer writes in some extra funding for ffmpeg (or whatever). Small teams making software to solve problems, and then gradually aiming to hire for end users to be able to code (this is a good way of achieving the "less people, higher salaries" dream) If we treat it as infra then I fear slightly that we'd end up like the Victorian to modern transition where the idea of public infrastructure being run by the people who built lots of it in the first place is unimaginable i.e. Britain's railways and many roads were built to make money, but we are now (I'd argue) so risk adverse and allergic to prices being allowed to signal anything that we would never actually allow this to happen now.

OtherShrezzing 1y ago

There's precedent for this type of thing in the EU. They sponsor(ed?) the bug bounty program for VLC Media Player[0] for example, among a few other OSS projects. [0] - https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/vlc-patches-critical-flaws-through-eu-open-source-bug-bounty-program https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/vlc-patches-critical-flaw...

opendomain 1y ago

I agree completely. 20 years ago I gave Dries the domain Drupal.com for free to support open source. I recently gave the domain MrBeast.org to Beast Philanthropy. But more important than Open Source is Freedom. I recently acquired the domain antifascist.org to fight the rise of fascism. This will be a website to share information on protecting your loved ones - it will be open source in that everyone can contribute. I welcome anyone that wants to help - send an email or use the contact form on the website.

opendomain 1y ago
I forgot to mention - I won the lottery! I won the 2nd prize of the recent Powerball - $50,000 and I am donating it to the new AntiFascist foundation. I am NOT rich. This money could have a significant impact on my life. But I wanted to help others and so I am showing my commitment to fight for Freedom. I have run OpenDomain for 25 years and have contributed domains to Open Source worth millions all for Free. I am ending that project to fight the rise of fascism. I welcome ANY help or criticism - https://Antifascist.org https://Antifascist.org
- addandsubtract 1y ago
  That sounds really great, but right now the site is still 80% template text/pages. I'll check back and make a donation once it's ready and lists the non-profit receiving the money.
  - opendomain 1y ago
    That is awesome! We have registered as a non-profit as “AntiFascist Foundation” and should finalize our paperwork this week. Please note that since the goal is social activism, we are a 501c4 and donations may not be tax deductible. We also would love any help on the design or messaging - any help would be greatly appreciated. Contact me and you can be part of the project
- Den_VR 1y ago
  This might seem like a ridiculous question but, exactly what do you consider fascism?

jph 1y ago

I lead open source projects for the United Kingdom National Health Service, specifically for NHS Wales Digital Health and Care. The UK is investing significantly in open source and publishing widely about the importance of open source. https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/ If you're technical and curious, I'm currently porting the UK NHS design system from Nunjucks to more implementations, including vanilla HTML CSS TypeScript, and my personal favorite Svelte Tailwind Daisy UI. Claude Code is churning on it right now. https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/public-good-design-system https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/public-good-design-sy... AMA. And we're hiring. Feel free to message me.

9dev 1y ago
Are you hiring in the UK exclusively?
- jph 1y ago
  Yes because the work includes frequent in-person teamwork.
maelito 1y ago
Similar to what the French gov does with its DSFR, Design System FR. React implementation : https://github.com/codegouvfr/react-dsfr https://github.com/codegouvfr/react-dsfr Main website : https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/version-courante/fr https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/version-courante/fr
- jph 1y ago
  Yes with a twist: the French government design system is purposefully reserved for the use of French government websites. I believe that a great design system will be flexible and more akin to user principles first, then implementation interface components (e.g. we need 200 or so components for one of our medical apps), then skinning such as look and feel and themeing. As one example I'm very keen on coding techniques such headless components as by Bits UI which provides headless components for Svelte. If anyone here wants paid work to code components like these by Bits UI, come work with us. <3

didgetmaster 1y ago

Careful what you wish for. Government funding almost always comes with strings attached. Once a project becomes dependent on government, they will call the shots. Do what they want or get your funds yanked! This could include stuff like coding back doors for the NSA or implementing spyware.

nordcikmgsdf 1y ago
Isn't that how it works now too? Contributors are often contracted companies that develop features that they upstream. If you don't do what the company tells you, you won't be able to upstream any features on their dime
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
teppix 1y ago
Like already mentioned, this is not in any way unique to open source software. On the contrary, being open source adds the opportunity to understand what the software does on a deeper level, and you can always fork (Librewolf is one of many examples that comes to mind). Do you have any examples where large entities taking over open source project having lead to the project's total demise? This sort of thing happens all the time the in the commercial space. It of course also happens to some extent to open source projects, but usually that results in forks if the demand is high enough. For commercial software, you don't have many options - especially for subscription based licensing, which is pretty much the norm nowadays.
- didgetmaster 1y ago
  I was not suggesting that demands from those paying the bills does not happen in proprietary software or that big companies don't do the same for open source projects today. The article was written as if there are no downsides to government supported open source projects. I just wanted to point one out.

SkipperCat 1y ago

Isn't this what the "Freemium" model is supposed to resolve? If a open source package is popular, people will build businesses around it and people who use it can then purchase support and get bonus features. This allows the marketplace to determine which project get supported rather than bureaucratic decree.

securesaml 1y ago
It's usually the more user-facing products that can thrive on this freemium model (probably full web apps or a lot of code). For example, laravel might get a lot of funding from this. However, the underlying infrastructure libraries, will not get any funding from this, even though they have much more users. For example, libxml2, xzutils, http parser ... You can't build any product off of an infrastructure library, purchasing support doesn't make sense, and there are little bonus features to be made. One way to remedy this, is to have well funded open source projects take ownership of its dependencies.

kindkang2024 1y ago

Perhaps open source should update its license so that businesses profiting from it contribute a small portion of their earnings — say, 1% — to a global fund, whether allocated specifically to the open source maintainers and contributors or to the Decentralized Universal Kindness Income (DUKI /djuːki/) for all lives worldwide. Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.

pabs3 1y ago
That wouldn't be compliant with the Open Source Definition, it says no discrimination against people, groups or fields of endeavour. https://opensourcedefinition.org/ https://opensourcedefinition.org/
- kindkang2024 1y ago
  Thanks for the kind reminder. After reviewing the definition and interacting with an AI, I see that it does indeed exclude this type of use. However, I feel these definitions create unnecessary divisions and discrimination. It seems unfair to projects with open source code under non-standard licenses, as they are prevented from using the term that aligns with how most people worldwide perceive it. The definition has also effectively made an enemy of money, which may be the root reason the author advocates for funding open source like public infrastructure. Personally, I wish “Open Source” could simply reflect its literal meaning—the one that most people perceive: that the source is open for any purpose, provided the specified rules are met. In my view, as long as the rules set by the maintainers apply to everyone equally, they do not constitute discrimination. You just have to follow the rules of the game if you want to play.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    That sounds like what the Open Source Definition does.
    - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bdcravens 1y ago

In some places, funding public infrastructure like public infrastructure has barely proven to be successful and sustainable. Some places are underfunded, and it shows, and other places are well-funded but in crippling debt.

mlinksva 1y ago

Fairly comprehensive and good blog post. Possibly too new to make it in, a proposal to take the learnings of the German STF (mentioned in the post) and expand it to the EU level for the next budget cycle (2028-2035) https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/ https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/

ongytenes 1y ago

I would be concerned how a future government would want to regulate open source if they took it over.

pabs3 1y ago

Some resources on funding open source here: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

tempeler 1y ago

To support open source projects and developers, a GitHub-like platform managed by a nonprofit organization should be established, and it should issue its own token. Similarly, a fair system that distributes these tokens according to developers’ contributions would be much more appropriate.

fontsgenerator 1y ago

Treating open source as public infrastructure makes sense—so many critical projects run on volunteer labor, yet the whole ecosystem depends on them.

globalgeek 1y ago

[dead]

callamdelaney 1y ago

If it's anything like hs2, we'll hire thousands of consultants on huge day rates who have zero incentive to ever build anything. Not an ideal model for open source funding.

sharts 1y ago

I’m kinda surprised we still don’t have publicly funded and run cloud yet and really only available in the academic settings if you’re affiliated with a university or research lab (and even then each of those have their own spins with lots of duplication). Some of these decentralized and open source projects (eg gridcoin.us, or golem.network and akash.network) seem like interesting ideas that would benefit with a public/private incentive system too. Perhaps giving some finite compute to experiment with at little to no cost. Others can donate or are incentivized to provide unused compute. There’s so much unused / underutilized resources out there that it would be a great boon to somehow make that available and further reduce barriers to entry. Aside from that it’s just a really interesting problem that intersects a lot of different areas.

throwmeaway222 1y ago

libraries are going away in favor of coding up the entire stack without libraries using agents

mrbluecoat 1y ago

> 96% of that $8.8 trillion depends on just 5% of contributors I have so much respect for the selfless 5%

xpe 1y ago

There’s a big difference between e.g. a public water utility and clean air (a textbook public good). The latter is non-excludable. Open source can use ways to encourage donations and participation: one good way is adding some form of excitability. This could mean: - increased access or influence over the project management and/or timeline - increased access to the core team for troubleshooting, debugging, etc - co-branding - white labeling (maybe?) - and so on

EarlKing 1y ago

The average developer, whether of open source or otherwise, refuses to use even the bare minimum of engineering discipline in realizing their programs, thereby resulting in an explosion of bugs that the rest of us have to pay for with our time, effort, and sanity.... and they want taxpayer money for that? HOW ABOUT NO. And don't tell me things would be different if we paid them since commercial software developers are certainly incentivized to do things properly and they STILL refuse to use proper engineering practices.