'Open Source Creators: Red Hat Got $34 Billion and You Got $0. Here's Why.' (tidelift.com) 236
Donald Fischer, who served as a product manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux during its creation and early years of growth, writes: Red Hat saw, earlier than most, that the ascendance of open source made the need to pay for code go away, but the need for support and maintenance grew larger than ever. Thus Red Hat was never in the business of selling software, rather it was in the business of addressing the practical challenges that have always come along for the ride with software. [...] As an open source developer, you created that software. You can keep your package secure, legally documented, and maintained; who could possibly do it better? So why does Red Hat make the fat profits, and not you? Unfortunately, doing business with large companies requires a lot of bureaucratic toil. That's doubly true for organizations that require security, legal, and operational standards for every product they bring in the door. Working with these organizations requires a sales and marketing team, a customer support organization, a finance back-office, and lots of other "business stuff" in addition to technology. Red Hat has had that stuff, but you haven't.
And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time. Sure, big companies know how to install and use your software. (And good news! They already do.) But they can't afford to put each of 1100 npm packages through a procurement process that costs $20k per iteration. Red Hat solved this problem for one corner of open source by collecting 2,000+ open source projects together, adding assurances on top, and selling it as one subscription product. That worked for them, to the tune of billions. But did you get paid for your contributions?
And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time. Sure, big companies know how to install and use your software. (And good news! They already do.) But they can't afford to put each of 1100 npm packages through a procurement process that costs $20k per iteration. Red Hat solved this problem for one corner of open source by collecting 2,000+ open source projects together, adding assurances on top, and selling it as one subscription product. That worked for them, to the tune of billions. But did you get paid for your contributions?
News? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this an article? Did these people actually expect to receive compensation?
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah. Turns out that when you make your software freely available, you do not get paid for it. If you're not OK with that, don't put it under an open source license.
This is a feature of open source, not a bug.
I feel like this article had to have been written for Millennials. Specifically, for Millennial app devs who've been told by their DevOps teams (which have no system administrators on staff) about this thing called "Linux" running underneath their java calls and JS routines and are wondering why a Google Ad isn't displayed on every 5th bash prompt.
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
Re:News? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
Agreed. And I just don't get this hostility.
You see it a lot in, say, Joomla and WordPress add ons. Those projects want to promote GPL use, so you have to use GPL to get in their add on directories. Many add on makers therefore whine all the time about their software being reproduced and distributed without their approval. Um, guys, you released it under a license that specifically allows users to copy it. That's a big part of the whole point of the GPL.
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Why would they sue CentOS? Red Hat has owned the management of it since 2014, which means that IBM owns it now.
In theory, they could shut down the project the day after the sale gets approved. Realistically, though, someone would just fork the project and call it "NotBlueHat Linux" or something. It's 99% open source, the only part that's really copyrighted is the logos.
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His "motivational" speech was something like this: "You guys make too much money, and this is going to change".
I've been on the receiving end of similar motivational speeches, and my response is usually, "You're right, things ARE going to change. Consider this my two week notice.", right there in the meeting in front of God and everyone. Not everyone is willing to do that, but I have a very low tolerance for bullshit.
If you're going to tell people you're going to screw them, don't expect them to just tak
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...competing against you with its modified version
Well, that depends on exactly what product you sell. If you're competing in selling the software, you are correct. However, note the GPL does not require publishing any changes unless the software is redistributed. If you run a hosting company, and release an open-source hosting management tool, your competitor can take it, modify it, and use it to manage their internal systems in direct competition with you, and the GPL won't affect that at all. If you want to require users to make source available, you m
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Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
They don't sell it, they sell support contracts for it. This is literally how money can be made from Open Source. Because the support for Red Hat has been so effective and reliable, the Red Hat distribution is worth billions. Anyone can reproduce all the aspects of their distribution for free, but a brand isn't the same thing as an assembly of parts.
Re:News? (Score:5, Informative)
A lot more companies, organizations, and individuals have made money selling services, support, and consulting from their F/OSS codebase.
What RedHat put to the table were a number of things that take time, money, and trust:
1: Hardware HSM devices to ensure package security and that the signing key never winds up as a pastebin or torrent. RedHat also took active steps to mitigate when someone compromised a HSM to sign bogus SSH packages.
2: FIPS and Common Criteria compliance. This may not mean much to most people, but in some environments, it is make or break.
3: Keeping versions steady and backporting fixes. This ensures that an application that is certified to run on RHEL 7.0 will run on RHEL 7.x, similar to how AIX has binary compatibility guarantees.
4: STIGs for compliance assurance at install-time. May not be important for people, but critical to businesses.
5: Erroring on the conservative side. Not many companies do this, especially in DevOps where everyone is locked getting features out there, and not caring about anything else. This by itself warrants the price premium.
6: Open source with everything.
All the above not just take time; they take money, especially the auditing and certification process.
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Red Hat doesn't sell anything but services and support.
You can still download everything for free from their site.
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and Red Hat contributes A LOT to open source too. If it wasn't for Red Hat there would be no "Linux" as we know it.
75% of kernel development is corporate (Score:3)
and Red Hat contributes A LOT to open source too. If it wasn't for Red Hat there would be no "Linux" as we know it.
IBM too. Red Hat #1 and IBM #4 in terms of corporate development of Linux. All together 75% of kernel development is corporate.
https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
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Yeah. Turns out that when you make your software freely available, you do not get paid for it. If you're not OK with that, don't put it under an open source license. This is a feature of open source, not a bug.
Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
Only as shady as, say, putting a sofa out on the curb for trash and having someone pick it up, clean it up and sell it. You gave it away; someone else is profiting from that.
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
Open source is like science (it was more or less modelled after it). We publish scientific discoveries openly because that's the best way to advance common knowledge. But then we let engineers and salespeople make and sell products out of them. I'm OK with that, because it's a lot of work to develop/sell/maintain/support a product even if you get the science for free.
If scientific discoveries were copyrightable in the way of music and movies, we'd probably be paying the Faraday family estate for each gadget that uses electricity. You can imagine it's not a great way to advance either the science or the engineering.
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Um, I don't know what crazy world you live on, but we pay our scientists.
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Um, I don't know what crazy world you live on, but we pay our scientists.
And 75% of Linux kernel development is paid for by corporations.
https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
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Patents exist (Score:2)
If scientific discoveries were copyrightable in the way of music and movies
They are. The term of exclusive rights is just a lot shorter for an invention than for a work of authorship.
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Rephrasing a discovery as an invention (Score:2)
Sometimes one can phrase obvious consequences of a discovery as "specific practical methods." For example, if the discovery is that lack of substance A in the human body causes disease B, the discoverer might claim to have invented supplementation with A as a method of treating B.
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
I am not a huge GPL supporter, but there are a couple things I'd like to point out.
- The stuff that's been packaged and sold by "someone else" can also, in turn, be repackaged and sold... or given away. The free CentOS distribution exists entirely because Red Hat Exists.
- Red Hat isn't just a middleman selling other people's work. Red Hat's employees work on - and contribute to - hundreds of different software packages. Red Hat is consistently one of the largest (and often THE largest) contributors of code to the Linux kernel, year after year.
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The free CentOS distribution exists entirely because Red Hat Exists.
- Red Hat isn't just a middleman selling other people's work. Red Hat's employees work on - and contribute to - hundreds of different software packages. Red Hat is consistently one of the largest (and often THE largest) contributors of code to the Linux kernel, year after year.
And IBM is #4. 75% of kernel dev is corporate.
https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
Re: News? (Score:2)
Re: News? (Score:2)
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> Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
But that's not what Red Hat does, or what you pay for with a RHN license. You're paying for the ability to call/email someone at a company for help on any related problem and they are contractually obligated to assist you. Which is why businesses use Red Hat instead of CentOS.
You're not paying for the software working, you're paying for someone to talk to and possibly sue a bit if
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Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
If that's the case then don't pick an open source license. Let me quote from the Open Source Definition:
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
https://opensource.org/osd-ann... [opensource.org]
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As others have pointed out, RH charges for support (and some proprietary bits if you opt for them).
Also, no Trivago needed, If you want the software for free, you can either download and compile it yourself or, even easier, grab a copy of CentOS (centos.org). It's built directly off the RHEL source RH makes available (just lacks commercial support, and proprietary bits they don't make available for free).
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Unfortunately this model means no profitability in products that are really easy to use
I've always suspected this as the reasoning behind oracle middleware being a steaming pile to support in-house.
Re: News? (Score:4, Insightful)
You clicked on it, didn't you ?
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They're dirty communists that can't handle the idea of people making money.
Versus dirty communists that share their work freely with everyone. ;-)
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Coding isn't royalty based. Even for closed source applications. I would get paid for my time doing development, now if my code makes the company a Billion Dollars I don't expect to be paid any portion of that, because I had already agreed to be paid for my time.
If you are an Open Source Developer, either someone had paid you for your time, or you volunteered it. Now that someone had profited off your work, you are not going to expect to get paid extra for it.
Now if we change the business model to a royal
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Coding isn't royalty based. Even for closed source applications. I would get paid for my time doing development, now if my code makes the company a Billion Dollars I don't expect to be paid any portion of that, because I had already agreed to be paid for my time.
Yes it can be. I earn royalties on a handful of closed source applications I've worked on. Yes, I put in a lot of extra unpaid work during the devel process of all of them; but it has paid off handsomely over the years. Some of them are 10yrs old, still being maintained and I still get my royalties.
Used Red Hat since the 90's, paid nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have been using their software since the mid-90s with version 3. I have never paid them anything. I bought a third party book on it once, they may have gotten some revenue from that.
Exactly the point of an open-source company. If you need all the corporate hand-holding, support, certifications, etc. then you pay. If you don't need it then its free, and you get access to the great documentation that the corporates paid for.
Re: Used Red Hat since the 90's, paid nothing (Score:2)
I went to a Circuit City and bought a bright red RedHat pack because I did not have high speed internet and mostly iffy downloads. A lot of extra software and a mousepad that was not a cheap foam job either. Bought a CDRW drive from the bargain bin, too. Could not save Circuit City from its death spiral.
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Mostly the same here. I did recommended support to a large client once and when we called for help with a driver on a 1394 storage system they refused, calling the bus "unsupported". I found a patch on a mailing list, rebuilt the kernel, and installed centos-release instead of renewing. The next major version had an upstream fix.
I later learned that people bought RHEL in the minority for proprietary cluster tools and in the majority for "somebody to blame".
After losing too many nights sleep to botched Sp
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not rich because of Red Hat but I have gotten paid. Sadly I was a broke teenager when their IPO happened and the people I strongly advised to get in on it didn't listen.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not rich because of Red Hat but I have gotten paid. Sadly I was a broke teenager when their IPO happened and the people I strongly advised to get in on it didn't listen.
This! Note that , although they didn't have to, RH did offer contributors the chance to join the IPO at the time. ALL contributors, not just their inside people. I didn't because I was a broke postdoc at the time, but wanted to: less to make money eventually, but because it'd be cool to own a share of a company that has produced stuff I use daily in the work that I get paid for.
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Seems like Red Hat should share a bit (Score:2)
I've shared source code updates for for-profit companies before, and do not mind if I don't get updated. Same would be true if I had contributed to Red Hat...
However it does seem like it would really be a great gesture of goodwill, to give some large amount of money (say $10k) to the top 100 RedHat contributors, however they felt like defining it...
I guess the danger is of course it may make many other jealous, who were just below the cutoff... so maybe it's better just to leave it as is.
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>However it does seem like it would really be a great gesture of goodwill, to give some large amount of money (say $10k) to the top 100 RedHat contributors, however they felt like defining it...
Seeing as how they employ a bunch of full-time open source developers, I'd wager that a good chunk of the top hundred contributors probably already work for them.
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I did all of this for a set price per year. Now, whatever that number is, or was, was agreed upon prior to my starting to work there. One day the company sold, and the owner made millions, and I got none of it. But I never expected to get anything of the compa
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I did all of this for a set price per year.
That is a good point, but I would also hope that RedHat would be giving employees some kind of bonus for taking the company to a place where that could happen...
To be clear I am not saying it's necessary, or even that they are morally compelled to do so. I'm just saying it would be a nice gesture and would help the company out by building goodwill for doing something they had no obligation to do.
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But I never expected to get anything of the company's either, because I already agreed to work for $DOLLARS per $TIME.
More importantly you were not *at risk*. You were paid for your time whether the company was profitable or not, whether the stock was up or down. Sure you can get laid off if things go really bad, been there done that, but people in that situation have generally been paid for the time they put in.
In general people prefer more security at the price of smaller payouts (salary and if lucky a modest bonus).
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How much risk are you taking by trading your hours for a fixed income.
Marx' argument falls apart when you realise not all employees are paid out of their own surplus value.
eliptical trainer (Score:3)
Marx assumed that all the gravitation effects in the solar system existed in (sun,planet) interactions. His theory falls apart as soon as you add a single moon. Even without moons, (planet,planet) interactions are often strong enough to really mess up space probe navigation.
Imagine if Newton was smart enough to figure out the inverse square law concerning (sun,planet) but wasn't smart enough to conclude tha
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My point:
Don't work for free.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Great point about working for "free" (Score:2)
They do, just indirectly. What we get is an operating system
That is a great point and a. good reminder about the value that people who seem to work for "free" are really getting from the work. They probably are not working if they do not benefit from the result itself.
Re:Seems like Red Hat should share a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
However it does seem like it would really be a great gesture of goodwill, to give some large amount of money (say $10k) to the top 100 RedHat contributors, however they felt like defining it...
The top 100 Red Hat contributors may very well already be on Red Hat's payroll - being paid to work on the software they're contributing to.
I used to really be into building my own RPMs, tweaking existing ones, etc. It was quite a learning experience in many ways... one of which was to note just how often the names of Red Hat employees appear in the changelogs for many, many different software packages.
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When RedHat went public in August 1999, I recall that many contributors were allocated initial public offering (IPO) shares. It's been awhile, but I believe they were at a discounted issue price.
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However it does seem like it would really be a great gesture of goodwill, to give some large amount of money (say $10k) to the top 100 RedHat contributors, however they felt like defining it...
Most of those people are already paid to do that work... so that'd be strange.
Red Hat Was a Major Contributor (Score:4, Interesting)
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NPM... WUT?! (Score:3)
1100 npm packages
What does the Node.js package manager got to do with Redhat Linux?
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I even looked at my keyboard. "N" then "R." Hmm. Nowhere near one another.
OCR mistake?
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$34 Billion ... (Score:3)
Re:$34 Billion ... (Score:4, Informative)
$34 billion just got handed to investors
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No, 34 billion was the buyout to people who owned redhat stock. It remains to be seen what IBM will do with Redhat, but it's entirely possible they'll screw it all up, and blue-wash it.
It doesn't matter. If they do screw it up, CentOS will live on.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Red Hat gave stock to people in the movement (Score:4, Informative)
Founders of the Atlanta Linux Showcase, which was the main Linux convention in the late 90's, worked their asses off, for free, to make the event happen every year. After a few years Red Hat gave the major contributors some stock, for free, as a thank you. I'm sure they did the same to others, this is just the case I know of.
In addition, Red Hat hired many contributors to open source, and gave them a good job so that they could continue to develop software, not just for Red Hat but for all of us. Remember Alan Cox? Me too, but there's many more. I'm sure all of those great technical hires got stock and each is getting a bit of the $34 billion.
Red Hat has always been less selfish and more fair than most software companies. They've always reflected open-source values, IMHO.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhh... this is easy (Score:2)
It was open source software. Free.
When they went with the support business model, I knew someone was going to get screwed. "Thanks for making this great piece of software, community, but it needed so much dang support... we'll take the money."
Yes (Score:2)
I was able to get in on Red Hat's IPO because I made a small contribution to net-snmp a couple years before. I didn't get rich, but it was a nice bonus that year.
Closed source is not evil (Score:3)
What irks me are all the 'open source zealots' out there who insist that anything closed source is some kind of evil thing. If you build something and take great personal risk to get it ready for market, you are often portrayed as some kind of 'greedy capitalist' if you want others who get value from your product to actually pay you something directly for your efforts. You built it. You own it. If you want to charge something for it, then you better make sure it adds more value than the price you are charging for it. Just don't let anyone tell you that you are less than human for not wanting to just give away the fruits of your labors.
But... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it also requires Lennart Poettering and whichever spaztard messed up Gnome.
"buy" (Score:3)
And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time.
That is right, they don't buy from me. Because I don't ask for money. They couldn't buy from me, even if they wanted to. I'd just point them to gitlab or github or sourceforge or my own website, depending on what it is they want and wherever I put it.
And I'm fine with that, otherwise I wouldn't have done it.
But distributors like SuSE and RedHat were controversial from the beginning because even if the legalese fineprint said something else, they did everything in their power to create the impression that they were selling software.
I personally don't have a problem with the business model, save that it could be a bit more honest, but this particular blurb someone in PR wrote is just... stupid, insulting and false.
Why should I care? (Score:2)
Time to grab a copy of CENTOS before IBM??? (Score:2)
Time to grab a copy of CENTOS before IBM does what they do best.. lock everyting up in a support contract and kill off whatever they can?
Joke's on you (Score:2)
I turned the PHBs at RH in to the feds, and still made a lot from the IPO.
Yeah, it was me. Next time, don't steal.
Top contributors (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at the top most contributing devs, you'll notice that they are actually on the pay roll of companies who rely on linux. If they weren't already employed by Red Hat, they would probably be at Intel, Google, even IBM themselves...
Not all programmers are poor. If they are anywhere near competent (and open-source software makes a great portfolio that is easy to show around), they'll certainly get hired, perhaps even get paid for their open-source hobby.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop poisoning the well. This is not economically-viable, it's not a good idea, and it's going to encourage people to get away from real and important policies like a Citizen's Dividend.
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if we lived in a world with UBI and the like.
Stop poisoning the well. This is not economically-viable, it's not a good idea, and it's going to encourage people to get away from real and important policies like a Citizen's Dividend.
So I read into what a citizen's dividend [wikipedia.org] was, and then I read down to "this concept is a form of basic income guarantee". IOW, a CD is a UBI.
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Type of Demogrant. UBI tries to pay out enough to live; a Citizen's Dividend pays a dividend.
I designed one that would have been an effective $300Bn tax cut in 2016, paying $6,000 per adult in 24 payments throughout the year, based on 1/8 of personal income and corporate profits as the FICA source. You build Social Security retirement and disability on top of this, along with a welfare system.
The Dividend doesn't supply enough for anyone to survive; rather it tends to strongly increase buying power an
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But who is going to generate the risky investments that are required to power an economy that can sustain a UBI? An economy without investment and risk is dead - look at the USSR for one. If you give everybody a guaranteed x, then you take the incentive away to do y to get x.
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Viability of UBI depends entirely on the amount paid. $100 / month is easily affordable, but probably not useful. $2000 / month is very useful, but less affordable.
The incentive to do work also depends on it. Most people will not be happy living on $500 / month for an extended period of time, but would be on $2000 / month.
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If the goal is to eliminate homelessness and extreme poverty, a UBI should be set equal to current SSI disability incomes. I believe that's around $800 a month, which is enough to live in less expensive cities with roommates. Because many homeless are incapable of responsibly managing money (often due to mental illness or addiction), it'll also be necessary to have a dual system where when someone is found living on the streets a social worker can arrange for most of their UBI to be redirected to appropriat
Re:Turns out... (Score:5, Insightful)
The freedom of other people to make money with software you write -- provided they figure out how -- has always been part of the deal.
Thee free software economy is still capitalism, it's just capitalism where you're paid for what you do for a specific customer. The proprietary software market is one where investors in effect attempt to collect fees for a naturally unlimited resource created, almost always, by other people.
Linux has been corporate controlled/developed ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Linux foundation reports that 75% of kernel development is done by corporate sponsored developers. Who tops the list of these corporate sponsors? Red Hat.
https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
Re:Open Source stock (Score:2)
Didn't RedHat offer the open source community some kind of inside deal on stock for their IPO? I remember something about it.
If true, it's not Red Hat's fault if you sold early
Re:Turns out... (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's another obvious point. If Linux were not free, it would not exist - let alone have any value. IBM has its own, perfectly good, proprietary unix platform. But they want to sell Linux - because people want to use Linux. And people want to use Linux because its free, which made other people want to use it. If the open source contributors to Linux had intended to eventually be compensated for their code, Linux would not exist. So you can't come along once Red Hat has become a viable business and say "I wrote some of the software - where's my payout?".
Red Hat's payout is for having become one of the main go-to companies for Linux support - and consistency as a platform over time. And now that many Linux users are migrating to Amazon's cloud, Red Hat's business is likely to shrink. But IBM's cloud business has nowhere to go but up - unless it fails. But it's a $36 billion bet they feel they have to make.
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And there's another obvious point. If Linux were not free, it would not exist - let alone have any value.
I know, like Windows and MacOS. Oh wait...
#1 Linux supporter: Red Hat, #4: IBM (Score:5, Informative)
Remember: not only RH pay salary for FLOSS engineers and supporters...
No, but Red Hat tops the list and IBM is #4:
..."
"The top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report (or Linux kernel 2.6.36) are:
1. Red Hat,
2. Intel,
3. Novell,
4. IBM,
5. Texas Instruments,
6. Broadcom,
7. Nokia,
8. Samsung,
9. Oracle
10. and Google."
"... more than 7,800 developers from almost 800 different companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began in 2005. Of particular interest perhaps is the finding that — seventy-five percent of all kernel development is done by developers who are being paid for their work
https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
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As I recall back in the day, the reason to contribute to Open Source efforts was not because you were going to make bank from it, but to make sure that the source code was available and could be modified or extended by those people who wanted/needed to as long as they shared the results.
This movement has always been an explicit "end around" the restrictions of copyright law. Going back to the dark ages of closed source and proprietary code won't be doing anyone (especially open source developers) any favor
Re:#1 Linux supporter: Red Hat, #4: IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
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What plan was that then?
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Where does this ridiculous notion that open source is somehow an 'end around the restrictions of copyright law' come from? It is no such thing. Copyright law is, basically, if you create something you get to distribute it and allow copies on your terms. Some people's terms involve payment. Other people's terms may simply include things like not preventing someone else from copying their work. In EITHER case, what gives you the power to do something about when your terms are not adhered to? Copyright l
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This movement has always been an explicit "end around" the restrictions of copyright law.
It's the complete opposite of that, in fact "copyleft" explicitly requires and relies upon copyright law to enforce perpetual control over the distribution of a copyrighted work just like Hollywood and music industry do.
FSF charged for tapes and gas money ... (Score:2)
Are you forgetting or just unaware that the FSF used to charge hundreds of dollars to purchase copies of their software (which then gave you all the rights to copy and redistribute)? Making money has always been allowed and encouraged.
Sure, but that was just the FSF charging for the mag tapes and gas money for station wagon ;-)
Re:#1 Linux supporter: Red Hat, #4: IBM (Score:4, Informative)
This article is from 2012. If you want up-to-date stats see LWN's regular reports, e.g. here is a recent one for 4.18:
https://lwn.net/Articles/76069... [lwn.net]
(Though Red Hat is indeed still right up near the top.)
Re:#3 Linux supporter: Red Hat, #9: IBM (Score:2)
This article is from 2012. If you want up-to-date stats see LWN's regular reports, e.g. here is a recent one for 4.18:
https://lwn.net/Articles/76069... [lwn.net]
(Though Red Hat is indeed still right up near the top.)
Thank you, #3 and #9 now, but wow Intel #1, Linux Foundation #2.
Re: (Score:2)
Eggactly, if you don't want to volunteer look for a paid gig. If you can't get a paid gig, then consider volunteering.