Re:The complicated business of funding open source software ...
by notacoward on Friday February 15, 2019 @07:54AM
(#19170470)
Like the cherished image of a startup beginning in someone's garage, $title has only a grain of truth. Sure, some open-source software was built on free labor. Much was built by people who were paid to do it, either willingly and intentionally, grudgingly, or sometimes quite unwittingly when developers used company time and resources to do something other than their jobs. Bored students are an interesting case. Is that "free labor" or an unstructured but still mostly intentional use of tuition dollars?
Myths and stereotypes aside, though, there is at least some subset of open-source software that has relied too much on altruism and needs to be put on a more sustainable financial footing. The example that comes to mind for me is not mentioned in the article: NTP. Here's an article about it.
The Core Infrastructure Initiative (mentioned in both that story and the OP) is great, but it's simply not enough. Maintaining a project like NTP is hard enough that acquiring the necessary domain and code knowledge is likely to mean years spent a long way from anything resembling a viable career path. Without guaranteed long term support that's a lot of sacrifice. This kind of thing needs a government-level (or Gates/Zuckerberg/Bezos level) benefactor to provide resources, salaries, and organizational support.
Myths and stereotypes aside, though, there is at least some subset of open-source software that has relied too much on altruism and needs to be put on a more sustainable financial footing. The example that comes to mind for me is not mentioned in the article: NTP. Here's an article about it.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/security/time-is-r...
The Core Infrastructure Initiative (mentioned in both that story and the OP) is great, but it's simply not enough. Maintaining a project like NTP is hard enough that acquiring the necessary domain and code knowledge is likely to mean years spent a long way from anything resembling a viable career path. Without guaranteed long term support that's a lot of sacrifice. This kind of thing needs a government-level (or Gates/Zuckerberg/Bezos level) benefactor to provide resources, salaries, and organizational support.