Comment by bruce511

Comment by bruce511 2 months ago

That's not how companies work.

Individuals have agency over discretionary spending, in other words you can wake up and decide to donate money, hire a OSS dev, and so on.

Because you personally have that agency, and because companies have lots of money, you project that agency onto companies.

But that's not how companies work.

People at companies have very little personal agency when it comes to spending money. Spending has to be approved, justified, and some value has to be received.

FOSS basically is (mostly) incompatible with this model. Some companies do pay staff to work on OSS but it's rare (and exclusively tech companies with a motivation.)

So while your statement is completely true, it's also not possible.

It's important to recognize that donations and corruption are indistinguishable, and company finances tend to be set up to avoid corruption.

squigz 2 months ago

> It's important to recognize that donations and corruption are indistinguishable, and company finances tend to be set up to avoid corruption.

Other than the humor in this sentence, I'm not sure why it would be limited to donations. They can hire devs to work on FOSS.

> People at companies have very little personal agency when it comes to spending money. Spending has to be approved, justified, and some value has to be received.

Approved by... people.

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bruce511 2 months ago

>> , I'm not sure why it would be limited to donations. They can hire devs to work on FOSS.
These FOSS we personally use. And FOSS we don't. Most of the FOSS we use already has plenty of paid devs. Think Linux, Firefox etc.
But what about small projects? How does that hiring conversation go? How do I explain my hiring request to my supervisor? Why am I spending 100k a year on a text editor? Why have I mandated we use my cousin's text editor and we're paying him to write it? When there hasn't been a significant update in 2 years? When we had to layoff staff to make mandated cost cutting?

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- squigz 2 months ago
  
  > Why am I spending 100k a year on a text editor? Why have I mandated we use my cousin's text editor and we're paying him to write it? When there hasn't been a significant update in 2 years? When we had to layoff staff to make mandated cost cutting?
  Wow. What absurdly unfair examples.
  
  Reply View | 6 replies
  
  bruce511 2 months ago
  
  They serve to show why random OSS projects are indistinguishable from corruption.
  In other words how do I choose which projects to support? How do I detect when said support is above board or when there are other factors?
  You may take issue with the specific example but "hiring OSS devs", or worse making OSS donations, look exactly like this (if not as blatant.)
  As a business owner How do I know these decisions are made in good faith? As a shareholder how much of this am I prepared to tolerate?
  Those businesses making "billions in profit" have very high levels of accountability. Lots of people care deeply about that money.
  
  Reply View | 5 replies
satvikpendem 2 months ago

> They can hire devs to work on FOSS.
And they do. Most big OSS projects have at least some of the maintainers and contributors be employees at a company where that OSS is used.

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zmgsabst 2 months ago

Of course it’s possible:

All of those reasons you listed are choices that people make — not laws of nature.

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bruce511 2 months ago

People make choices all the time. Choices that are overseen by management, and shareholders.
People can of course choose to spend their political capital, and discretionary budget on random OSS projects. Or they can choose to spend it on their project, their goals, the outcomes that make their walk in the company easier, the actions that will get them promoted and not fired.
These are choices people make, and frankly OSS funding delivers very very little bang for the buck. (On a buck by buck basis.)

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- zmgsabst 2 months ago
  
  Sure — my point was that we should discuss why this happens in terms of the real human dynamics. Either to conclude it’s not worth changing or to design a plan of how to change it.
  But neither goal is aided by hyperbole, pretending that not paying OSS is gravity.
  
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- chii 2 months ago
  
  > frankly OSS funding delivers very very little bang for the buck
  which is why companies generally don't pay anything for OSS. If the cost is zero, but the benefit is not zero, then the bang for buck is infinite!
  
  Reply View | 0 replies

sulandor 2 months ago

> People at companies have very little personal agency when it comes to spending money. Spending has to be approved, justified, and some value has to be received.

seems to all hinge on the justification part, for which ppl that do it for the lulz don't really care

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