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Comment by supriyo-biswas | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone find it troubling that the Linux foundation is being hijacked for tertiary interests that do not involve things in the operating systems/virtualization/containerization area but are simply concerns that some members of the Linux foundation have?

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Linux Foundation employee here [0]. The value the Linux Foundation is providing the legal infrastructure for competitors to work together and stay clear of anti-trust problems. Every one of our meetings is supposed to start with this slide [1] or similar [2].

0: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryjones/

1: https://wiki.hyperledger.org/download/attachments/20024102/H...

2: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/antitrust-policy

FYI you have a outdated view of the Linux Foundation, it truly hosts a variety of open source foundations involving open source + data these days... it can be more viewed as a professional "foundation as a service" organization: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/resources/publications/linux...

Aside from hosting projects under the Linux Foundation directly, LF (and OASIS, for example) also offer Foundation-as-a-Service for anybody who is ready to pay for a setup with a good (whatever that means to you) governance model. This is exactly what's happening here and I see no problem with that (unless your argument is that LF should not do Foundation-aaS at all).

Yes. I worry that they wind up like Mozilla Foundation, and down the road, Linux itself winds up being a fraction of what it could be.

Or the Wikipedia foundation.

Sadly it seems many of these large open source foundations are prone to mission creep and stagnation.

So here's my thinking.

When it comes to soliciting investor money, startups are often beset with questions about specific technologies the investors heard were "hot". E.g., "Everybody's talking about cloud these says. What's your story on cloud? How does cloud fit into your strategy?" Just substitute "crypto", "AI", etc. So the startup is forced to either hit the road looking for a VC interested in their product or incorporate cloud, crypto, AI, or whatever into their product.

I suspect that big-ticket donors come to foundations with similar questions, and substitute social issues like climate change, the gender wage gap, etc. "What are you doing about climate change? How is your foundation protecting LGBTQ rights?" So the foundation is put in the position of saying "Our primary mission is maintaining a critical piece of software" and refusing the donor's money, or incorporating the social issue into their mission. Because an awful lot of money could be at stake and the foundation needs money to keep the lights on.

I saw Linux, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, and I thought: one of these is not like the others. It's almost the opposite. What mutual interest can they possibly have?

The Linux foundation is heavily captured by companies like those others on the list. It only seems odd on the list for historical reasons.

Indeed. Lunduke's Linux Sucks series go into detail.

Why are these "opposites"? All these companies need and invest in Linux.

Linux foundation is essentially puppet of their sponsors

Isn't that kind of what a 501(c)(6) trade association is--which is what LF is?

The grandparent's point is the "Linux" part of the name. If this had been "BigCo Interests Foundation", nobody would blink an eye.

Not really, besides maybe the name being a bit confusing. As far as I can see they're still doing great work supporting open software/knowledge projects.

Remember that the Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6), a trade organization; it's the same sort of organization as RIAA.

It's essentially a marketing service provider.

Linux foundation has already shown itself as rotten to the core when they went after PrestoSQL on behalf of Facebook.

Last I checked, Facebook created Presto and can decide what they want to do with that IP, just like any other business.

Common cause makes strange bedfellows.

How is mapping a tertiary interest?

I have to agree with GP. This feels like an effort that should be led by openstreetmap foundation.

This reminds me of the Mozilla foundation side quests and their inevitable lack of focus.

You've already expanded the Linux Foundation to tertiary interests but don't see mapping as one of them? The very same foundation that created the NodeJS foundation?

Odd view on things frankly. This is the one thing the foundation does very well.

Linux foundation is already a corporate directed foundation.

They don't push or even care about Desktop linux for a reason, they are also extremely anti GPL, which funny because one of the biggest reasons for linux's success is the GPL, just look at BSD/freebsd and Apple, and compare that to Red hat and Linux.

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