Do Free Software project with funding 'pay it forward' to the volunteers on other projects they heavily depend on? (I don't really know) If not, they deserve to suffer the consequences.
How would a free software project 'pay it forward'?
They are in a very similar position, aren't they?
Edit: For some reason, I can't reply to child comments (probably a cool-off time-out at work?).
Just a short note here, then: $1.25e6 for the FSF translates to 10 developers like Koch being paid (the donation page quotes "120000 EUR").
That's ten. For the whole FSF. As an example of a well-funded project. I'm not going to comment on that. HN would rightly give me months of cool-off time.
It seems reasonable that these projects should consider adding items to their budget to redistribute funds to projects that they depend on.
Some probably do this, however I think the GP was suggesting that something like this become more common.
Which ones are those?
In addition, some projects that are not well-funded as a project are "funded" in the sense that companies pay people to work on them, for example Microsoft paying Simon Peyton Jones to work on GHC.
Ubuntu is funded by Canonical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth in other words. So one big donor.
Debian... seems to mostly get by on volunteer labor and be ok with it, or it did when I was involved with them. Has that changed? I suspect that in some ways Debian is underfunded given the amount of work they do. Perhaps money would make some things happen faster there.
The Apache Software Foundation does a decent job at fundraising, and even employs a few people to do stuff like administration. Most of the projects get by with companies that pay people to work on them, which seems to work out pretty well.
Firefox/Mozilla make most of their money with deals: Google and Yahoo, last I remember.
I don't know about OpenSSH.
It's possible, but mostly donations don't seem to work unless it's big chunks of money from companies.
Unfortunately, that is very far from true.
Ubuntu was negative $21 million USD in 2013[1]. Canonical would literally make money by just not doing Ubuntu anymore.[2]
(Every time Canonical is on the verge of bankruptcy, Shuttleworth re-seeds back into the company from his personal checkbook)
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/199373896/Canonical-Group-Limited-...
(the numbers are represented in thousands, so 21,343 is 21,343,000)
[2] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/13/mark-shuttlew...
The significant losses due to Ubuntu development and related expenses are why Canonical as-of-late has been turning focus away from Ubuntu towards other markets such as Mobile and especially Enterprise (a la Red Hat's turf).
Circa 2008, before the Unity and Pulseaudio switches, it was considered by pretty much everyone the premiere Linux distro. I don't see why they could not get support contracts with Dell, HP, etc to sell Ubuntu computers and provide the tech support in exchange for positive cash flows.
Even today Dell is still doing Sputnik and in European countries you can buy HP hardware with Linux. Why is Canonical not taking advantage of the fact that they could be making money off support for their desktop OS through all the hardware vendors?
Ubuntu has never been profitable for Canonical. Shuttleworth's game-plan was always long-term minded regarding Ubuntu -- but as we've seen as-of-late, Canonical is shifting focus to other markets they view as potentially profitable. Shuttleworth has committed to keeping Ubuntu alive, but it's no longer Canonical's sole hope for income.
> I don't see why they could not get support contracts with Dell, HP, etc to sell Ubuntu computers and provide the tech support in exchange for positive cash flows.
This isn't just a problem for Ubuntu, but for most end-user linux distros. People always joke with Linus when the "year of the Linux desktop" will finally arrive... The people who use Linux as their daily driver generally don't need the support, and for the ones who do, well it's a lot less marketshare than Windows.
> Even today Dell is still doing Sputnik
Besides Sputnik, and some Linux-only end-user manufacturers like System76, there really isn't a lot of choice for pre-installed Linux end-user computers.
It's weird too, because Sputnik is $50 more expensive than the windows version of the same hardware. (probably some Microsoft deal going on here).
Linux comes pre-installed on majority of server hardware (server hardware than comes with any OS at all that is), and Linux dominates this field. But the "year of the linux desktop" hasn't quite arrived yet. I do hope it comes soon.
Is it about profits, or - I'm going to be kind of cynical here - chasing taillights? The way they seem to bounce around from one thing to another (mobile phones! embedded!) makes it feel like the latter.
I tend to agree... modern Canonical feels like a company that lacks focus (probably because they aren't quite sure what the focus ought to be after realizing Ubuntu might not ever turn a profit for them).
I've used System76 and Zareason. System76 are Ubuntu-only (and the hardware may have issue with other distros); Zareason will support any Linux.
I run full-time linux on my laptop and my goto hardware has typically been a Thinkpad T series.
Canonical's cloud business might be profitable (even though Canonical as a whole is very-mush-so-not), however their cloud business is not coupled to Ubuntu, ie. they could use any Linux Distro, or any OS for the matter.
Ubuntu is a total loss center for Canonical. It's surprising to a lot of people given it's popularity... but popularity doesn't equal profitability... especially when most users don't pay anything for the software (not even support fees).
Typical beancounter mentality.
Probably comes with a suggestion of closing this division and going with something else
OF COURSE this department loses money. But it is a net gain for the company, and in fact without it the rest wouldn't exist.
Not sure what "of course" means here... it's very possible to be profitable off your OS Development division... look at Red Hat, SUSE, etc. They pay for the development from support payments... they collect support payments because enterprise wants their OS... it's a positive feedback loop. The better the OS, the more enterprise pays, the more funding RH can put into the OS dev team, the better the OS gets, the more support fees they collect, etc etc etc...
Canonical has not been able to successfully charge for support like RH and SUSE have figured out.
> But it is a net gain for the company, and in fact without it the rest wouldn't exist.
It's not a net gain unless the company can be profitable as a whole and subsidize (and justify the enormous expense) off-put by tertiary services, etc.
... right now Ubuntu project is responsible for Canonical being perpetually in the red... every quarter, since their foundation. Canonical could very well just run enterprise support contracts, or push their cloud services. They don't have to use Ubuntu... any OS would suffice. They aren't somehow coupled to Ubuntu to the point if Ubuntu didn't exist, Canonical wouldn't either.
> The Apache Software Foundation does a decent job at
> fundraising, and even employs a few people to do stuff
> like administration. Most of the projects get by with
> companies that pay people to work on them, which seems
> to work out pretty well.
https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2014/board...
As a 501c(3) non-profit, it is constrained as to what it can do with donations.
All of the Debian developers are volunteers, am I wrong? Slackware can barely support one employee, the founder. OpenSSH falls under OpenBSD, which also supports just the founder, everyone else volunteers, and they DO volunteer some serious time and do important things. They also had problems raising funds, there were discussions on HN about that here, and I'm sure there will be more in a year or two.
From: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2014.html : * If $10 were given for every installation of OpenBSD in the last year from the master site (ignoring the mirrors) we would be at our goal. * If $2 were given for every download of the OpenSSH source code in the last year from the master site (ignoring the mirrors) we would be at our goal. * If a penny was donated for every pf or OpenSSH installed with a mainstream operating system or phone in the last year we would be at our goal.
This is kinda depressing.
Is there someone from the Debian project here? I'm wondering if they could afford to run their own mirrors around the world if they had to. Could they cover hardware, colo and bandwidth costs, if they had to? I'm just curious.
That's the point -- the ones that can should support the ones that can't, which are often foundational components of the reason the ones that can, can get money in the first place.
Too bad OpenSSL wasn't one of them until after the big "heartbleed" incident.
The core infrastructure projects don't seem to get as much funding as they ought to, especially given almost everyone relies on them (even if they don't realize it).
Prior to Heartbleed and the industry rallying to fund critical projects, OpenSSL only received an average of $2,000 USD a year[1]... that's pathetic.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-g...
> Intel will invest "$300 million to help improve the pipeline for women and minorities, actively support the hiring and retention of diverse candidates, and fund programs that support the positive representation of women and minorities in technology and gaming industries."
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-diversity/
> "Google Gives $775,000 to Nonprofit for Tech Diversity CODE2040 said Monday it received $775,000 in grants from the tech giant to support the launch of free training programs for more than 5,000 black and Latino college engineering students over the next two years."
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/02/google-gives-775000-t...
But there are also justified backlashes to the programme, given that there is a perceived priority given to the programme in some areas instead of writing software. The argument is that not everyone and their dog needs to be involved with writing software, so why should we encourage them to? You don't see such pushes in dentistry, the car industry or anything like that; "Are you a WOMAN? Then join the car industry!".
Strangely we do in IT though, where it is the belief that we should make EVERYONE code!
The "I will fight you and I will win" response from Emmanuelle Bassi is a particularly horrible/strange/passionate reaction from one of the guys involved with the programme: see http://blogs.gnome.org/tvb/2014/09/12/im-looking-at-you/comm...
Yes you do. Every single fucking time this comes up someone says "you don't see this in construction". It's rebutted every time it comes up and it's really fucking easy to do a simple web search to find examples of programmes to get men into teaching or nursing or to get women or minorities into construction.
Example links have been posted to HN many times.
I haven't seen anything like this here in the UK. Is it a US thing?
BTW, I wasn't advocating for or against in this GNOME argument. I am entirely an observer and was highlighting the arguments made by both.
That's at least how I think it went, you can go look it up, the details are online.
I thought I ought to add that because I suspect people are thinking that I dislike the programme? Either that or people like down voting with no reply.
With regard to the encouragement for everyone and their dog to take up coding, I see it a lot but in truth I do not see the same things in other professions - I have never seen a push to make youngsters take an interest in banking or journalism yet over here in the UK there is a push to make programming/coding a part of the national curriculum for youngsters, hence the introduction of the Raspberry Pi to encourage that.
The FSF had revenue of 1.25 million in 2013. I'm not trying to comment on where it came from or where it went to. I'm only pointing out that they are not in a very similar position.
In 2013 FSF paid $ 689,239 in salaries and, astoundingly!, $ 48,995 in credit card fees.
Anybody got an idea why they pay so much?
Source: 48995/689239 = (x*.029+.30)/x
Some banks do tack on a foreign transaction fee though, but that goes on the payer.
If they had zero expenses other than staffers, at a very modest 65,000 USD a year that would not even cover 20 people.
The EFF, FSF are the only real "good guys" out there fighting for your techie rights every day... They could really use your donations and support (even if you don't agree 100% with all of their message).
As mentioned by the grandparent comment, GPG is in use by Debian, Ubuntu and RedHat package managers. Whether or not you count those three as free software they have plenty of money to pay forward to a piece of software that underpins their entire stacks.
I am having a hard time to find financial statements from Debian.
Ubuntu, or rather Canonical, being a private company, doesn't seem to release financial information. The Ubuntu main page doesn't even provide a 'donate' link anymore.
Which leaves RedHat, at last. A public company, of course[0]:
Operating profit 2014: $ 1.3e9
Net total income 2014: $ 178.3e6
Try to download it: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute/?version=1...
For some reason SPI has not put out an annual report since 2012: http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/2012.pdf
http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/what-is-the-development-costs-o...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/199373896/Canonical-Group-Limited-...
21 million USD negative, largely due to Ubuntu development and related expenses.
Canonical has never been profitable, which is why Shuttleworth constantly re-invests his own personal capital in the company.
[0] - https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00095.html
However, a lot of commercial entities use pgp as core of their business: all software packaged for the linux world is signed with gpg one way or another. All commercial distributions depend on it at their very core. I'm amazed that they don't fund gpg at least partially.
One of the points of open source is that software becomes a commodity, and that will always hurt OSS founding.
Even sadder is the fact that these "free" things actually cost us much, much more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237
It's a play on words though, by analogy with "Pay it back" which is returning a favor to one who did a favor for you first (like paying back a debt). In the case of large distros being heavily reliant on GPG and other upstream projects, I think the applicable term here is "pay it back".
Upstream developers helped out Debian, et al, and now Debian needs to pay those developers back. Arguably, by gifting their distros to the world at large, they're already "paying it forward".