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Comment by dreen | Hacker News Reader

This is very true and also the reason that you can't just dump a bag of cash onto an OSS project and expect it to fare batter: Open Source projects run on time, not money. The only way to give it more time is to have more devs that are willing to commit their free time to it.

This is not to say you shouldn't give money to OSS projects. You should definitely support your favourite programs even if its just $5 a year for a single one you used that year.

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>The only way to give it more time is to have more devs that are willing to commit their free time to it.

Or, you know, to pay devs to work on it on their work time.

That's how a great deal of progress for Linux/OSS came in mid-nineties to mid-00s, when companies from IBM and SUN to Red Hat and Novell, paid lots of programmers to work on critical parts (from the kernel and Apache, to Open Office and Gnome). When that dried off, pace slowed down for a lot of projects.

For majority OSS projects out there, that is not sustainable. As you said so yourself, when the money runs out the project is in trouble, because when those people inevitably get real jobs to cover their livelihood they become less active or might even leave, feeling disincentivised (sp?). And with them the knowledge about all the little obscure stuff goes away. Plus, if you had a successful project and a nice job you liked, would you quit it because some people on the internet promised to pay your salary? You just have no guarantee they will do that.

Indeed. Commercial contributions are very valuable, but it's important to take steps to reduce the inherent risk. If AcmeCorp stops paying its employees to contribute to your project, do you still have a project left? If that thought scares you, it's a good indication that you need to increase contributor diversity. Perhaps that means more volunteer contributors, or perhaps it means additional corporate contributions. But do not put all your eggs in one basket!

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