Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

This is cool. I don't know why the author wrote <<Uber signed a support agreement with Zig Software Foundation (ZSF) to prioritize bug fixes. The contract value is disclosed in the ZSF financial reports.>> ... but did not provide the amount.

Here is what I could find:

  * https://ziglang.org/news/financials-update/
  * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14_ljFHGFXY5NhBhlfjgkO0RZHqeVv04fAmCxw3ZusYc/edit#gid=1409515513
  2022-01-21 Deposit Uber UBER USA,LLC     EDI PAYMNT JAN 20 1454320         REF*TN*0001454320*1\ Support Contract 52,800.00

Great work! Keep it up Zig community.

(edit for formatting only)

View on HN

I don't know about such deals, but isn't 52k like nothing for such agreement? It's close to free support.

Honestly, I'm not sure, but it is a worthy question. I quickly searched that doc: It is the only "Support Contract" entry. I sincerely hope they get more.

The contract details are outlined in the blog post. Depending on the number of hours worked to fix some issues, it is likely fair.

  > Contract terms were roughly as follows:  
  > * Uber reports issues to github.com/ziglang/zig and pings Loris.  
  > * Loris assigns it to someone in ZSF.  
  > * Hack hack hack hack hack.  
  > * When done, Loris enters the number of hours worked on the issue.  
  >   
  > Uber has a right to ZSF members’ time. We have no decision or voting power whatsoever with regards to Zig. We have right to offer suggestions, but they have been and will be treated just like from any other third-party bystander. We did not ask for special rights, it’s explicit in the contract, and we don’t want that.

Does this mean 52k upfront + (hour rate) * hours? If not, how much "time" of ZSF does Uber own?

Presumably that depends on how support that contract covers, and over what time period. If it covers 1 hour/month over a monthly time period it's a huge amount. If it cover 40 hours/month over a yearly time period then it's a pretty small amount given the usual rates for such services (although still more than some people make for that amount of work).

It's a 52k bonus for basically doing what you're already doing.

Exact. It is money to fix bugs. Presumably these bugs would be desirable to fix anyways, this just changes the priority.

Unless the reported bugs are not really bugs or the reports of of very low quality there appears to be little downside for what could potentially pay for a full-time dev.

It is $52k to prioritize bugs which Uber reports to be impacted by, ahead of other bugs

It's impossible to tell without details of what the support agreement includes. My large company has support contracts with a lot of vendors, and many of them are for way less than $52k

No, actually 52800 US dollars is a lot different than nothing.

It's nothing to Uber, but its a lot more than nothing to the ZSF, would be my thoughts on it.

Considering that most companies give zero, nada, shit, to open source projects they heavily use and even base their systems on, no it's not "close to free".

It's closer to the cost of a part-time developer for a full year.

The amount is in a screenshot in the article itself with the subtitle "The amount of money that changed hands is public, because ZSF is a nonprofit."

There was a screenshot towards the bottom of the article which showed the figure(s) so that wasn't really excluded.

Though I guess including it inline would have been nicer for the readers.

People don’t bring Uber their flowers for actually supporting OSS with their dollars.

They were paying customers for SPIFFE and SPIRE support when Scytale was an independent company as well

Reply on news.ycombinator.com