Comment by crabbone

I don't agree with the author on how financial compensation should be structured or where does it have to come from.

My idea about what's currently in open-source domain is that it can be split into two categories: infrastructure projects that enable users to use their computers at the basic level, enable networking communication and maintain state-provided services land in "category A", while "category B" can be roughly described as interesting hobbies, leisure, entertainment etc.

What needs to happen, in my mind is that we need (international) organizations like eg. WHO to take care of the "category A" projects, where governments would have to allocate resources to finance and oversee these projects. Much in the same way how governments spend money on postal service or regulate / oversee banking. So, projects like Linux or OpenStack need to be under such international umbrella. This would require a bureaucratic process of examining such projects, estimating their usefulness, budgeting them etc.

On the other hand, non-essential projects, or projects that explicitly don't want government oversight / intervention could still work on the currently employed scheme: donations, sponsorship, volunteering.

In other words, I believe that some people working on open-source projects today ought to be paid. We just need a framework which establishes how much and how many such people can be employed for how long etc. It's prudent to make them (international) government employees to avoid playing into interests of sponsors who might not act in the interest of anyone but themselves.

For me, this would also solve a situation whereas employees of private companies are told / paid to work with open-source technology, but are powerless against the maintainers of such technology, while having no plausible alternatives. A lot of such projects succeed based solely on the good will of the open-source maintainers, but some fail due to the lack of, or deliver lower quality products. Having essential services covered by a government entity, and, by extension, being open to citizen complaints and wishes would make it possible to fight back against maintainers lacking the said good will.