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Would be nice if they donate to LibreOffice then, to improve the support of various MS Office features in files, as well as comparison/diffing features. Win-win
by xvilka 1mo ago
Would be nice if they donate to LibreOffice then, to improve the support of various MS Office features in files, as well as comparison/diffing features. Win-win to everyone.
- pocksuppet 1mo ago[flagged]
- dumberquestions 1mo agoGood thing that "would be nice" doesn't entail that they have to.
- YetAnotherNick 1mo agoWhat does donation does for open source? Surely it wont come close to pay talented developers who create it. For cloud cost, there are few companies already giving generous free tier for open source. The only thing that donation could pay for is marketing e.g. events and meetups.
- mksaunders2 1mo agoThat's not true at all. Donations are the biggest source of income for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, and have been used to pay developers who've joined the team in recent years: * Michael Weghorn (accessibility) * Jonathan Clark (language and scripting support) * Neil Roberts (scripting improvements) * Dan Williams (macOS support and general UI improvements)
- YetAnotherNick 1mo agoHow much do they pay them?
- Maken 1mo agoThey don't disclose individual salaries but you can check their annual reports [1]. About 1M € among all the developers. [1] https://www.documentfoundation.org/financials-and-reports/ https://www.documentfoundation.org/financials-and-reports/
- Jach 1mo agoIt obviously depends on the project and the scale and duration of a donation, but plenty of open source projects have benefited from donations. Donations can and do pay for developers, as well, part time or full time. With LibreOffice, you can answer your questions directly by browsing https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/ https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/ and as a non-profit you can easily find more detailed reports: https://www.documentfoundation.org/financials-and-reports/ https://www.documentfoundation.org/financials-and-reports/
- small_scombrus 1mo ago> The only thing that donation could pay for is marketing e.g. events and meetups. You do realise there's an insanely large gap in-between "everyone is a volunteer" and "everyone is full-time staff", right?
- bayindirh 1mo agoSorry, I can't understand what you mean by that. Do you mean that it's good that companies can profit over people's mostly voluntary efforts for free, or Free Software is meant to be used for free and never supported in any way, or what? I'm at a loss here.
- KronisLV 1mo agoYou are allowed (and encouraged) to do good things without being obligated to. I think it would be immensely cool if OpenAI donated some of that crapload of AI money to the people behind LibreOffice to help with development - and then having like a blog post about it or something would already improve the project's visibility a bit more (hey, every bit helps). What's peanuts to them could help with the sustainability of the project a whole bunch!
- bayindirh 1mo ago> You are allowed (and encouraged) to do good things without being obligated to. We're absolutely on the same page with you, and I try to do my best with what I can in that regard. On the other hand, I see a perspective which thinks that companies are entitled to use everything for free and don't need to support the Free Software ecosystem because it's an externality that they don't have to care for, which bothers me a lot. What I was trying to understand that whether this comment was supporting that perspective, or is there something I'm missing entirely.
- redsocksfan45 1mo ago[dead]
- mplewis 1mo agoyou people are always mixing up the legal thing to do with the right thing to do
- fangspire 1mo agoBut laws are just encodes morality.
- Dylan16807 1mo agoMany of them are, but they're focused on big picture issues and preventing harm. Most of morality has no legal force.
- ultrarunner 1mo agoFunny how morality so often benefits incumbents and the powerful.
- marcus_holmes 1mo agoAbsolutely not. It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo. Laws have nothing to do with morality. Or justice.
- lukan 1mo agoYes they do, but not with a philosophical concept of morality, but merely those of the ruling class/majority.
- buran77 1mo agoIt's not really that "absolute". Laws are not all made the same. Some start as a reflection of what society considers "right" at the time. Then the laws fall behind as society's morality reaches a tipping point. So the society pulls that part of the legal system behind it. Other laws are progressive, and they pull society's morality behind them. Some are driven by/for the majority, and some by/for the elites. But they all reflect the morality of society to a degree, whether the democratic majority, or the powerful minority.
- j16sdiz 1mo agoAs much as I would hope they would... I don't think that's in character for sam altman.
- mastermage 1mo agoSam "Its only Open until it does not benefit me anymore" Altman
- alpineman 1mo agoIt's like that scene in the Simpsons when Bill Gates comes to buy out Homer: "You don't think I got rich writing a bunch of checks, do you?!"
- dev1ycan 1mo agoThey will never do this