Help me start a FOSS Tithing movement
gabrielweinberg.com
gabrielweinberg.com
Donating money to open source organizations is great, as there is almost always some overhead, but contributing in kind is even better!
That said, if you want to donate money, here are links to donate directly to a few open source foundations, off the top of my head:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html
See also: Google's Summer of Code
With the donations, it would of course be up to the pledger, but I was thinking something more directed with higher bang for the buck. Some ideas there would be for specific tasks that never seem to get done, or via bounties, or for student contests.
In general though, I'm thinking more on a company basis rather than individual. My thought was that if a company could make a public pledge, they'd be more likely to embed it in their culture. Of course, it may be hard for existing companies to do it, so I'm thinking it may be more appropriate for startups.
In a previous job (security system tech), we could donate an install to charity - it would still show up in our numbers (for pay grades and bonuses and whatnot), but the money we would have made for that particular install would be donated. "Volunteering" had a fantastic effect in pulling the whole company together, and a lot of the time the money went toward somebody in the local community.
I would love to work for a company with a similar culture, where I could donate some number of hours per week/month to working on FOSS.
Happy leet day to you :)
More over, as a developer open source software has never sat well with me. I don't understand how it got so hip and cool. I don't understand why anyone would want to participate. I'm damned good at my job... but I don't do it for free for anyone... My time is too valuable and my friends and family deserve to have as much time with me as possible. I know I'm mostly alone in this around these parts... But maybe someone can explain why so many people give away their free time using their hard earned, and valuable, skills for free.
Though I do appreciate all their hard work, and I use open source products, I just don't understand why they do it.
The difference is that you think of programming as a job, whereas a lot of programmers think of it as a hobby that can also pay the bills.
You might as well ask why do people build model railroads, or airplanes?
A final thing: if you have to justify activities financially, it constrains the activities you'll be willing to undertake. There's a lot of fun stuff to do that is not financially defensible, at least initially.
This is fundamentally a job vs. calling thing. From my perspective I didn't understand how people could go into CS in university never having programmed before. I'm sure some of them are better programmers (and certainly employees) than I am, but it was new to me.
Whenever someone asks me if I like my job I tell them, "No, but I haven't thought of something else I'd rather do yet".
I don't think your answer fully addresses the question. Surely you can do it as a hobby and find a way to turn your hobby coding into something that makes money. Hell, isn't that half the reason most of us are here (@HN) watching people turn side projects into businesses and thinking about how to do it ourselves? It seem's contrary to the aims of the community to say they participate in open source projects because it is their hobby. There has to be more to the motivation than that.
Perhaps, It's a desire to have other folks that create software look at what you've done and see the good parts of it. Only a Software Engineer can see why this part here was tricky and clever and it's nice to have the kind of reinforcement. Often times a boss only cares about the result, they don't always revel in the tiny clever details that got there.
If someone asks me my answers would be the complete opposite of yours. I am really happy with my job, I work with great people on new software, and new challenges that challenge me to think in different terms, provide new thoughts to the table and find ways to solve new and interesting problems that didn't exist yesterday.
That in and of itself is the reason I am a programmer. You are very different from me in that you are a 9 - 5 programmer whereas I am a 24/7 programmer.
The difference is that I write a whole lot of code outside of company time that is my own, and there is nothing better in the world than to be able to release code out into the wild to have someone find it, and use it to further their project, to be the cornerstone on which they build the next big thing that I can't imagine yet. Get improvements back, advice, comments, bug reports, and new ideas on where to take this new free software. I've already paid the bills, I've saved some money, I'm developing my skill set, why not release some of my knowledge out into the world for future generations to build upon?
As for your comments about not being motivated to work on FOSS or not understanding why it exists, I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion. I don't have the time or inclination to argue with you about why OSS exists and is important, but while it's here and actively helping me do my job, I don't understand an argument against supporting those projects with bug reports, patches, and yes, money.
If you're doing something for-profit, you're answerable to investors, clients, and/or customers.
If you're doing something for yourself (scratching your own itch), you're only answerable to yourself. That satisfies the artist mentality.
Me, I am not at all certain the Web would have yet progressed beyond a 1998ish level without open source software and, perhaps more importantly, open standards.
It is all but certain that you have used FOSS with some frequency. If you have no innate desire to work on code on your own, perhaps you could view it as a debt to repay.
Some Data to Analyze : GNU Manifesto (some selected quotes)
""" consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
...
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free. """
Here RMS explicitly states that using and making software exists in some sort of moral universe where actions have moral implications. A central tenet to RMS's morality is evidently the Golden Rule which he defines as: "I like a program I must share it with other people who like it." By sharing RMS means of course sharing the code and all the rights to the code. If software is made, used or distributed in violation of this moral principle it dishonors the program and the user; cursing the software.
Thus, according to the GNU Manifesto, Free Software exists to make the fulfillment of our moral obligations possible. At the beginning of the Manifesto RMS says the movement needs money. The OP is advocating for providing such money on a monthly basis as a way to fulfill our obligation to ensure software can be used morally.
I get gratification from seeing people use my code in a huge variety of projects, not just the one I'm working on at work.
I enjoy seeing my projects grow beyond what they would have if they were trapped within a single company.
If you're young or otherwise unknown your open source contributions can be a good way to market yourself.
75% of Linux is now written by paid developers. (http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm) Many other large FOSS projects also have a varying number of paid developers. Since a lot of companies who employ such developers (e.g. Red Hat, Novell, Google) rely on FOSS for their business-critical applications, they have a good motivation to make sure that the software they use perform well. Of course there's also hobbyists, volunteers, and people like RMS who believe they have a profound obligation to promote FOSS.
there's also hobbyists, volunteers, and people like RMS who believe they have a profound obligation to promote FOSS.
I wouldn't consider that these two as completely distinct sets of people. Most of the paid Linux developers I know of (not necessarily a representative sample, but a fair few) started doing it as a hobby, and still do similar things as a hobby in their spare time. They're being paid to do it now because they were very good at it, and a particular company wants some say in exactly how it's done.
A former co-worker of mine put it pretty well: "Quiet! As long as they don't know that we'd do this stuff anyhow for free, they'll keep paying us to do it!"
If there were no open source projects and you wanted to write the latest trendy web app, you'd have to either write or buy all of it which is horribly time-consuming or expensive. With open source, you can run a free web server and a free database server on a free OS and just write the business logic and presentation. For the latter part, you can leverage free application and javascript frameworks to speed up development.
At the end of the day no one cares if your application uses C/Postgres, Ruby/MongoDB, or C#.NET/MSSQL; they care if the application is useful. So all this contribution to open source helps everyone achieve the end goal (useful app) without getting lost along the way (implementing or buying the entire stack).
So why do people give away their free time and hard-earned, valuable skills? Everyone benefits.
I guess it never caught on then, but perhaps now that most software companies benefit in some way from FOSS, it makes more sense. At any rate, you deserve much props for making this pledge.
The donations need to be automated as much as possible. At wpquestions.com we send out some small amount of money every month to the people who have created plugins for WordPress, whenever a question is posted about that plugin. The whole process is automated, no one needs to think about it. I think establishing this as a cultural norm throughout the open source community would help make the open source eco-system more vibrant. And lots of small payments from many small businesses probably allows greater freedom of maneuver (for the open source projects) than having a few big projects paid for by a few big corporations - simply looking at Oracle's handling of Java convinces me of the dangers of having all funding come from just a few sources.
I owe so much to FOSS it's not even funny.
It'd be nice to give something back (beyond bug fixes and my own, lame contributions).
Imo contributing isn't enough. First class software is (often) in need of fulltime first class developers.