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I am a fan of how much Google has put in Eclipse. I think Google employees are on the Eclipse board, they pay Eclipse committers, and might be one of the bigger

by vineet 14y ago

I am a fan of how much Google has put in Eclipse. I think Google employees are on the Eclipse board, they pay Eclipse committers, and might be one of the bigger contributors to the foundation. However, I do think that Google (and most companies) should step it up even more. Consider how many employees Google has using Eclipse, and how many products Google has building on Eclipse. They are doing a lot with Eclipse and should contribute a lot. Yes, Eclipse is open source, and companies do not need to contribute to it. But the benefits of open source is a lot more than the free price, it is the freedom to improve bugs that affect your development, and most importantly the freedom to make sure that some single company is not leading the product/project in a strange direction. I do think that every company that uses Eclipse as an IDE for its employees should have a moral obligation to donate $500 (the typical price of an IDE) to the Eclipse Foundation. And if you are building a product on top of Eclipse, then perhaps 10% of the $500 per user of your product. Yes, I know I am asking for a lot. Yes, donating to the foundation does include the full time salaries of committers. Yes, there are more companies than Google that need to be doing this. And, yes, I do fear that the tragedy of the commons is to be expected by default for any successful open source project.

sp332 14y ago
As was mentioned in this thread 2 hours ago, Google has 9 committers to Eclipse. http://dash.eclipse.org/dash/commits/web-app/commit-count-loc.php http://dash.eclipse.org/dash/commits/web-app/commit-count-lo... They've also paid members of the foundation for over 6 years. And there is never a moral obligation to pay for something that is explicitly licensed for free.
- vineet 14y ago
  Perhaps Eclipse and the open source community as a whole needs to consider asking for more than just making their code/products free. I know of way too many people giving so much to open source projects, building 'successful' communities, but having a hard time getting enough investment into the community to guarantee the future growth of such ecosystems.
- dillona 14y ago
  > And there is never a moral obligation to pay for something that is explicitly licensed for free. I was with you up until that part. In my opinion there is a moral obligation to donate to projects if you are using them for commercial gain.
codeka 14y ago
The problem there is, if Google donated $7.5 million (15,000 engineers * $500) to the Eclipse Foundation, that would certainly give the impression that Google had an unfair amount of influence on the direction of project, compared to a small company only paying a couple of hundred $ (or an open source developer, not paying anything at all). I think that goes directly against what you say is the primary benefit of open source: that no one company has an undue amount of influence on the product. I think it's much better that they contribute a few engineering resources directly to the product, rather than just handing over money. That way, they're guaranteed to be engaging directly in the open source "process".
- vineet 14y ago
  Yes, $7.5M, so they should contribute ~75 engineers. But, not just them, also Cisco, EBay, Amazon, and every company having a lot of usage of Eclipse. And the same line of thinking for Linux, and other open source projects.
- GlennS 14y ago
  In the case of Eclipse, I think you're missing that IBM is already the dominant contributor, and that indeed the project originated from them. So I doubt anyone is going to accuse Google of trying to purchase influence. But, it's an open source project, people and companies are free to contribute as much as they like or not at all. I don't use Eclipse regularly at the moment, but I have in the past and so I'm grateful to everyone who has supported it. I'm especially grateful for this particular donation, because one of the reasons I don't like to use Eclipse is its sluggishness (although anecdotally I do think it has gotten faster and more stable in recent years, and it doesn't seem any worse than Visual Studio in this regard).
GeneralMaximus 14y ago
I'm sometimes surprised at how much most FOSS projects -- including prominent ones with large user bases -- struggle for money, test hardware, hosting and even manpower. Look at The GIMP for instance. Just a small band of developers doing their best to release a free image editor that people have incredibly high expectations from. How much money, hardware and manpower does the team working on Photoshop have? Open source projects deserve our money more than some random platformer game on Kickstarter. Truth is, though, that most FOSS projects do not actively solicit donations, or seem to not know how to do so. People are more inclined to donate when you tell them that their donations will be used to pay 3 developers who will implement features A, B, C and D and make a new release in X months. Nobody will click that small donate button tucked away in the corner of your project website. Nobody will donate when you tell them "financial help is needed for many different reasons", quoting from the GIMP website. This move from Google is a perfect example of how donations should ideally work. The developers mentioned a concrete problem the project was facing, Google stepped up and donated enough money to solve that particular problem. Nothing more, nothing less.

by vineet 14y ago

sp332 14y ago

As was mentioned in this thread 2 hours ago, Google has 9 committers to Eclipse. http://dash.eclipse.org/dash/commits/web-app/commit-count-loc.php http://dash.eclipse.org/dash/commits/web-app/commit-count-lo... They've also paid members of the foundation for over 6 years. And there is never a moral obligation to pay for something that is explicitly licensed for free.

vineet 14y ago
Perhaps Eclipse and the open source community as a whole needs to consider asking for more than just making their code/products free. I know of way too many people giving so much to open source projects, building 'successful' communities, but having a hard time getting enough investment into the community to guarantee the future growth of such ecosystems.
dillona 14y ago
> And there is never a moral obligation to pay for something that is explicitly licensed for free. I was with you up until that part. In my opinion there is a moral obligation to donate to projects if you are using them for commercial gain.

codeka 14y ago

The problem there is, if Google donated $7.5 million (15,000 engineers * $500) to the Eclipse Foundation, that would certainly give the impression that Google had an unfair amount of influence on the direction of project, compared to a small company only paying a couple of hundred $ (or an open source developer, not paying anything at all). I think that goes directly against what you say is the primary benefit of open source: that no one company has an undue amount of influence on the product. I think it's much better that they contribute a few engineering resources directly to the product, rather than just handing over money. That way, they're guaranteed to be engaging directly in the open source "process".

vineet 14y ago
Yes, $7.5M, so they should contribute ~75 engineers. But, not just them, also Cisco, EBay, Amazon, and every company having a lot of usage of Eclipse. And the same line of thinking for Linux, and other open source projects.
GlennS 14y ago
In the case of Eclipse, I think you're missing that IBM is already the dominant contributor, and that indeed the project originated from them. So I doubt anyone is going to accuse Google of trying to purchase influence. But, it's an open source project, people and companies are free to contribute as much as they like or not at all. I don't use Eclipse regularly at the moment, but I have in the past and so I'm grateful to everyone who has supported it. I'm especially grateful for this particular donation, because one of the reasons I don't like to use Eclipse is its sluggishness (although anecdotally I do think it has gotten faster and more stable in recent years, and it doesn't seem any worse than Visual Studio in this regard).

GeneralMaximus 14y ago

I'm sometimes surprised at how much most FOSS projects -- including prominent ones with large user bases -- struggle for money, test hardware, hosting and even manpower. Look at The GIMP for instance. Just a small band of developers doing their best to release a free image editor that people have incredibly high expectations from. How much money, hardware and manpower does the team working on Photoshop have? Open source projects deserve our money more than some random platformer game on Kickstarter. Truth is, though, that most FOSS projects do not actively solicit donations, or seem to not know how to do so. People are more inclined to donate when you tell them that their donations will be used to pay 3 developers who will implement features A, B, C and D and make a new release in X months. Nobody will click that small donate button tucked away in the corner of your project website. Nobody will donate when you tell them "financial help is needed for many different reasons", quoting from the GIMP website. This move from Google is a perfect example of how donations should ideally work. The developers mentioned a concrete problem the project was facing, Google stepped up and donated enough money to solve that particular problem. Nothing more, nothing less.