It's indeed ridiculous how the world's trillion dollar private companies run on essential software that idealistic open-source maintainers build basically for free while scrambling to even make basic income.
I'm all for open ideals, but we shouldn't be as naive to ignore how stuff we build on these ideals - if offered completely free - will eventually almost exclusively profit only those private entities that best know how to use them, hide them in a 'proprietary chain' and use VC capital to invest more in PR, markting and sales than engineering to reap all the benefits off them.
Therefore, I think, the original problem was that most software wasn't automatically defaulting to a limited-commercial (e.g. business of > million revenue must pay for usage in their product) or AGPL licenses that would benefit all - by either allowing maintainers to get a share from the success the helped build, or making the resulting products build on top, instead of private profit, available freely to all.
Maybe some countries could pay stipend to software developers who do that? I mean, this open source software enables other companies to produce cheaper software and to earn more money and they pay taxes from that money, so tiny bit of these taxes could also be redistributed back to some independent developers.
Then I am going to have to complain that the trillion dollar tech firms contribute no taxes while middle class joes pay a stipend to the people who built the software that they depend on to be trillion dollar companies
True. It's really cases like this that demonstrate the shortcomings of BSD/MIT licenses -- at least if you are of the position, that companies could and should contribute a sliver of profits back to the projects enabling that success.
(Much like contributing back in taxes for the infrastructure used and the educational system producing the qualified employees. But that may be a bridge too far for some of HNs readership :) )
With my OpenBSD developer hat on, getting new hardware in the hands of developers is really important, many of us are hacking on 5-10 year old thinkpads that need replacing.
Shamelessly, if I may, in addition to funding the open source projects you use, if you can, please do consider directly supporting individual contributors/developers personally who work on those projects, many are volunteers and even a small monthly contribution could mean the difference.
What I’m curious about is, then, how should this problem be handled? Actually, there’s a point I’m somewhat curious about.
For projects with a bus factor of 1 or very low, and in a supply chain like this, there’s a somewhat difficult point regarding what kind of system should be established so that the core developers maintaining that kind of core receive appropriate compensation.
That’s true, after all. Technically very new or challenging technologies get the spotlight from many people, but these technologies are very important yet are a kind of engine technology that is less visible... I’m curious how this should be identified or selected.
That said, if you set up a committee, the committee could also become an inner circle based on their personal connections.
The devs should send emails asking for a couple million each to all the large tech companies while reminding them how much their utility is being used for their product. I think a lot of them will donate the money. It’s lesser than chump change to them.
I remember when the maintainer of an open source XML library contacted dozens of companies for support to fix a critical vulnerability, and most of them didn't even respond and aside from two the rest went basically "not our problem, get lost".
A handful of companies probably care a bit but most won't bother to pay even a penny.
This article is biased towards open source developers and ignores all the employees at tier 1 backbones who are the ones actually holding up the internet.
The difference is that the employees at tier 1 backbone providers get paid, and if one of them quits, there is an organization responsible (and incentivized) to hire and train replacements.
So what? That doesn't make those people, the software they write, or the actions they take any less important at keeping the internet functioning. The work employees do seem to constantly be downplayed since they often are not working out in the public, nor are they making public blog posts advertising what they are doing.
You have seemingly missed the point of the article entirely, while also becoming offended for... I'm not even sure. Not being mentioned maybe? The internet will never cease to be a rich vein of absolutely baffling behavior
I'm all for open ideals, but we shouldn't be as naive to ignore how stuff we build on these ideals - if offered completely free - will eventually almost exclusively profit only those private entities that best know how to use them, hide them in a 'proprietary chain' and use VC capital to invest more in PR, markting and sales than engineering to reap all the benefits off them.
Therefore, I think, the original problem was that most software wasn't automatically defaulting to a limited-commercial (e.g. business of > million revenue must pay for usage in their product) or AGPL licenses that would benefit all - by either allowing maintainers to get a share from the success the helped build, or making the resulting products build on top, instead of private profit, available freely to all.
(Much like contributing back in taxes for the infrastructure used and the educational system producing the qualified employees. But that may be a bridge too far for some of HNs readership :) )
Now AI has made software abundant, there really isn't any need to pay maintainers really.
Enterprises can just fork it, rebuild the software for their own needs and not contribute anything back.
Even if the license is AGPL, they ignore it anyway and it is unenforceable.
https://www.openbsd.org/want.html
The OpenBSD foundation is ~77% away from its fundraising goal for 2026!
https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2026.html
Shamelessly, if I may, in addition to funding the open source projects you use, if you can, please do consider directly supporting individual contributors/developers personally who work on those projects, many are volunteers and even a small monthly contribution could mean the difference.
https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html
The xz story is so depressing. The only person who stepped up to help him was someone trying to plant a backdoor...
Only made it a couple of "pages" in and had to close the tab entirely because of the convoluted animated presentation.
None of it felt like it was in service of anything other than screaming "look how neat this is!" which is just terribly distracting.
That’s true, after all. Technically very new or challenging technologies get the spotlight from many people, but these technologies are very important yet are a kind of engine technology that is less visible... I’m curious how this should be identified or selected.
That said, if you set up a committee, the committee could also become an inner circle based on their personal connections.
A handful of companies probably care a bit but most won't bother to pay even a penny.
OSS is a strategy, not a business model, and it is certainly not a good lifestyle for developers.