Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

I'm a startup tech founder, benefiting massively from FOSS code. I realise there is a debt here, and the plan is definitely to repay that debt once we're cash-positive.

Being able to have that plan, and not having to pay for software licences up front, is awesome.

But I totally understand TFA's point of view. Maintaining a FOSS library is hard work, and those benefiting from it should contribute. If he's not seeing that happen organically, then he's quite within his rights to make it happen.

And to be fair, he's not even saying "I'll charge you". He's just saying "contact me". I'd speculate that if I needed to use his code, I could cut a deal where we would pay him when we get cash-positive.

View on HN

"Small companies don't have the resources"... that's some backward thinking right there.

By failing to contribute, small companies cost themselves money very quickly. How can a small business afford to live in a world of un-maintainable forks, patches and tech debt?

Only large companies can afford to maintain private forks of FOSS. Small companies have to give back, or they will simply disappear.

I can't count how many times I've submitted a patch only to hear my supervisors complain that I made a contribution to the thing that makes the business profitable.

I know you are deploying irony but due to competing interpretations I can't figure out its intent. Do you mean the supervisors do complain or they don't?

Company A and Company B both use the same FOSS application. Company A has internal devs that add/fix the FOSS, but keep those updates internal. This gives Company A an advantage Company B does not get. Company A managers recognize this, and feel that since the updates were made on company time, they do not have to provide that to the rest of the world. Company A devs commit their updates to the repository, and now Company A mangers feel like they have given away work product for free. Lots of way pointy hair bosses to be upset in this scenario.

I'm pretty sure he's not being ironic. I've heard the same thing from other folks before.

Why would they complain? Sorry, I don't work in software so I don't understand.

Because they are giving away their work for free. It makes sense only if you don't actually work with software and can only think about money.

I think it more accurately depends on the nature of the project and the nature of the patch. Not every patch is "technical debt" [itself a term that often encourages incorrect conclusions due to the debt metaphor not fitting perfectly] and not every amount of maintenance is scary. People react this way in fear before they understand the work.

But sure, it's a good idea to send patches upstream.

The problem with tech startups, especially VC funded ones, is that they are rarely profitable until they are sold to a bigger company or (in rare cases) go public.

And once either of those happens, there will be forces opposing substantial OS contributions ("fiduciary duty" etc), which will win out if the leadership doesn't fight for it.

This is why I said "cash positive" not "profitable". Not the same thing. e.g. Amazon is cash positive, but not profitable.

My priority is making sure payroll is covered. After that, I'd put OS contributions as an infrastructure cost (like licence fees for paid software), so fairly high up the list of priorities, and an annual budget item.

And most tech startups aren’t even profitable after they go public...

Have you offered equity shares or options to your FOSS providers, as you do for your direct employees? If not, why not?

Red Hat sort of did that when they had their IPO. They allowed contributors to the open source they used to buy Red Hat shares during their IPO at the IPO price.

They were remarkably generous in who they considered to be a contributor for this. For example, I found a bug in trn that caused it to trash .newsrc files on Red Hat. I spent about 30 minutes figuring out what was going on, and submitted a patch to Red Hat to fix it. It was a very simple patch, merely changing a declaration of one variable from char to unsigned int [1].

This was enough for Red Hat to classify me as a contributor and invite me to participate in the IPO. I bought $2000 worth of their stock at the IPO price on the morning of the IPO, and sold it that afternoon for $9000.

[1] There was some function or macro that given a character returned a set of flags indicating if the character was upper case, lower case, numeric, etc., and apparently on all other systems the flags that trn cared about where in the lower 8 bits, and so storing the flags in a char worked. On the then newest Red Hat, that was not true.

Because I think that owning a tiny shareholding in a business is more hassle than it's worth for everyone involved. Options is more of a possibility, but again, more hassle than just cash. And involves more explanation to non-techies who won't understand, and will possibly intervene.

I can just put "software licence" as a budget line item and make a payment, and everyone's happy, no questions asked.

What's the legalities of donating ownership for smear campaigns?

What prevents me from making Microsoft a 1% shareholder of my company Cockwombles Inc?

Or giving them a specific exemption in my license for the cockwomble software library?

> What prevents me from making Microsoft a 1% shareholder of my company Cockwombles Inc?

I don't see the mechanism by which this would be possible. Companies (and individuals) are not under some legal obligation to accept donations.

> Or giving them a specific exemption in my license for the cockwomble software library?

I've seen licenses over the years that say things like "this software cannot be used by companies or contractors working in the defense industry" or "this is free except when used by FrombleCo, which will need to pay me $500 per user." I suppose it's a way of expressing your disapproval of FrombleCo (or the defense industry), although I'm not sure how I really feel about that approach personally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com