Crowdfunding critical infrastructure

Fri Jun 28 02:21:18 UTC 2019

Jon Lewis <jlewis at lewis.org>:
> This may have been an anomaly made possible by early .com $, but I'm pretty
> sure at one point, companies like VA Research / VA Linux employed developers
> who in various cases worked part or full time on the Linux kernel and other
> Open Source projects "as their job".

I was on the Board of Directors of VA Linux at the time. I know we did.

That kind of generosity can exist, yes.  But the economic headwinds
are against it. If you're one of the lucky developers patronized
*inside* a corporation, you are never more than one bad quarter from
being defunded.

For some projects, like Apache or the Linux kernel, the business case
for cross-corporate collaboration on shared infrastructure is so clear
that even a succession of non-technical bosses can grasp it.  And when
that happens, you can thank me, because I wrote up that business case
where it could become part of C-level thinking.

That just means that people like me get to worry about the next level of the
problem. Shared infrastructure where the connection to profits is *not*
one that a non-technical executive can easily grasp.  Good luck keeping
*that* sort of work funded inside a for-profit organizatiion.

> That you've developed/maintained software that's in every Android device,
> but haven't been paid by anyone for that may be the biggest flaw with Open
> Source / Free Software.  Presumably, if you chose to stop doing that work
> and nobody volunteered to step into your place, Google (and others) would be
> forced to fork the code and pay developers to maintain their own versions.

They would.  More efficient for me to keep doing it, but that's not an efficiency
that shows up in a manager's quarterlies.

> Free software was meant to give users control of / access to the code...not
> create a parasitic ecosystem where some people code because they enjoy doing
> it and others profit from their work by packaging and selling it or things
> based on it.

My eyes were open.  Open source was, and is, a solution - oe ary least
a good hard whack - at one set of systemic problems. Now we get to
deal with the problems that come from the solution.

That's what I'm trying to do.

You know how to help.  Take the Loadsharers pleadge and spread the word.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>