Comment by diggan

4 days ago

> It says what’s not changing for people

For the people who are currently experiencing the first time a project they heavily used gets acquired by a for-profit company, it's worth remembering that everything written is "As it stands currently", which can change at any time.

It wouldn't be the first time the founders/company/project said "Nothing will change now when we got acquired" only for it to shutdown/change drastically just months after.

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diggan

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traceroute66  4 days ago

And the other side of that coin is ...

Lots of FOSS maintainers are happy to bitch and moan about how they are doing god's work for little or no remuneration. They are of course, quite correct to do so, it is indeed hard work, long hours, poor or no pay.

But, and its a big BUT .... you can put all the donation, crowdfunding buttons that you like on your GitHub page. The reality is that will only get you so far.

So there is a lot to be said for corporations that recognise the work and are willing to pay an old-school salary to the maintainers. It provides life-stability for the maintainers, and it provides product-stability for the corporation ... win-win.

And in 2025 the reality is that corporation thinking on open-source is a far cry of what it was back-then. In the majority they are far more enlightened and open to contributing-back.

Yes it will never be sufficient for the die-hard FOSS greybeards. But even a billion dollar corporation cannot possibly put dollars behind every single tiny piece of open-source software it ever uses. You have to pick-and-choose, its just the reality of life.

Finally, regarding the FUD about "oh, its going to be shutdown tomorrow". That road is paved with examples where it DID NOT happen ... I seem to recall that the usual suspects (Redhat / Canonical / IBM etc.) all employ a great deal of maintainers of various critical parts of Linux. As far as I can tell the output of those maintainers taking the corporate dime has neither suffered or been shutdown.

  • johnnyanmac  4 days ago

    >But, and its a big BUT .... you can put all the donation, crowdfunding buttons that you like on your GitHub page. The reality is that will only get you so far.

    I agree. Most people simply won't donate, be it individuals or companies using the tools.

    >In the majority they are far more enlightened and open to contributing-back.

    Ehh, it's mixed. A few companies won't mind going open source, some "open source", and many "open source but not really". Just having your code readable isn't the FOSS menality, and that's pretty much where the buck stops.

    >Finally, regarding the FUD about "oh, its going to be shutdown tomorrow". That road is paved with examples where it DID NOT happen

    Suvivor's bias doesn't really feel reassuring here. And just because it's not shut down doesn't mean it won't be subject to corporate rot. That's honestly worst than an honorable death.