Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

> That’s where the pledge comes in. It encourages companies to pay $2,000 per year for every developer they employ to an open source maintainer of their choosing, and then publish an annual report detailing the company’s payments to the open-source ecosystem in the past year.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#5

Post by wppick » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

> Pretty much every big tech company you could think of uses some type of open source software, including Apple, Google, and Facebook.

These companies contribute massively to open source. The article would have more impact if better examples were chosen.

I think the model of open source works fine as is. Maybe people will write open source out of passion to work on cool project, and maybe to build a name for themselves. Companies will open source to give back, but also to get additional resources to help debug and build out the codebase. This just feels like begging for money. If you want to make money write sass software, don't corrupt open source

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#6

Post by theturtletalks » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

greenavocado wrote: post #3

What is the desired end goal of this? Shaming companies into paying for something?

You'd be surprised how many people don't know that tech companies are standing on the shoulders of giants (maintainers of popular open source projects). Most people not in tech legitimately believe tech companies were built from scratch.

On the flip side, FB could put up a billboard talking about how they built and open-sourced projects like React and GraphQL.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#7

Post by diggan » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

theturtletalks wrote: post #6

greenavocado wrote: post #3

What is the desired end goal of this? Shaming companies into paying for something?

You'd be surprised how many people don't know that tech companies are standing on the shoulders of giants (maintainers of popular open source projects). Most people not in tech legitimately believe tech companies were built from scratch. On the flip side, FB could put up a billboard talking about how they built and open-sourced projects like React and GraphQL.

> FB could put up a billboard talking about how they built and open-sourced projects like React

Or they could put up billboards talking about how Llama is "Open Source" while at the same requiring projects to display "Built with Llama" prominently if they use a Llama model (guess how many companies follow this requirement?).

Or, how they tried a BSD+Patents approach with React initially, until they finally changed it after much backslash?

Facebook/Meta has seemingly a long history of wanting to claim they do a lot of FOSS, yet clearly mislead people about those efforts.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#8

Post by _mlbt » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 5:15 PM UTC

This is childish and counterproductive. If companies are complying with the terms of the license it has been released under, they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong.

If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#9

Post by ChrisArchitect » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

See also giant Nasdaq tower screen on Oct. 8 https://fosstodon.org/@opensourcepledge/113317944830385330

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#10

Post by swatcoder » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

wppick wrote: post #5

> Pretty much every big tech company you could think of uses some type of open source software, including Apple, Google, and Facebook. These companies contribute massively to open source. The article would have more impact if better examples were chosen. I think the model of open source works fine as is. Maybe people will write open source out of passion to work on cool project, and maybe to build a name for themselv…

I agree that those are bad examples in this context, but the underlying problem is real.

As a trade community, developers have come to treat open source projects as commercial vendors that they simply don't have to pay for -- they place support and roadmap demands on maintainers and regularly whip themselves up into a fury of frustrated entitlement when maintainers don't abide by those demands.

For passionate volunteers and part-time contributors, this dynamic is unsustainable and we've seen a continuously growing trend of maintainers burning out from the way they and their projects have come to be treated.

What we have now is not the vision of open source that many were fighting for 20 and 40 years ago. It's a bigger part of development than anyone back then could have imagined, but its mode of growth came with toxic consequences that erode the sense of camaraderie, enthusiasm, communalism, and good will that the whole effort was originally built upon.

We're on track for a collapse of open source, where mature, healthy projects figure out new ways to protect maintainers, largely by putting strict qualifiers on their licenses and making less and less stuff truly Free and Open.