Back in October 2024, the Open Source Pledge was launched. The idea was to ask companies that use open source software to donate $2,000 per developer they employ per year. Much of the media coverage at the time labeled it a “peer pressure” campaign. By listing companies who paid, those who didn’t would feel pressure to join.
According to LWN, 20 companies initially signed up. Today, there are 30. You can view that as 50% growth in 6 months, but it’s probably fairer to view it as rather tepid uptake. They’ve taken $2.4 million in donations. Most of the companies have very small staffs and most are companies you’ve never heard of. You don’t see Apple, Google, IBM, or Microsoft in the mix, even though those companies employ thousands of developers and ship products with open source every day.
The OSP web site is rather short on details and doesn’t define things well. The idea sounds great, until you start to ask quetions.
- Who determines who gets the money? Strangely, this critical issue is not mentioned in their FAQ. Should Linux Torvalds get a fat check every month? Or the guy who wrote leftpad? Their site says “Payments are made directly to maintainers — we never handle any funds.” So apparently the company decides?
- How should the money be apportioned? Does a company look at its npm stack and divide by the number of dependencies and divvy the funds up?
- What if a company uses open source software all over the place, but doesn’t have any developers? I mean, really, that’s every company today if they use a modern OS (including Windows) or smart phones.
- Should a company in Western Europe donate as much as one in central Africa? $2,000 per year has vastly different meanings in those economies.
- What about companies that directly employ open source developers? This is given short shrift by the OSP, as if it doesn’t matter.
- What about companies that donate to foundations? That counts, even though “even though most foundations today are not set up to pay maintainers (they focus more on conferences, trademarks, etc.)”. So…?
- And of course auditing. Granted, it’s just a pledge, but how do people know the money is actually given?
Is This Really Necessary?
Feel free to disagree, but history has shown that open source projects do not need financial motivations. Instead, people work on them based on several factors:
- “Scratch the itch” – no one else is doing it, and they need it. So they directly benefit from their own work.
- Portfolio-making. They may not get paid for their OSS work, but it looks great on the resume they use to land a high-paying job or paid projects.
- Hobby/DIY. Someone writes something for their own use and enjoys maintaining it.
What if there is a need in the market and no FOSS project? Then someone will make a commercial product and sell it. Unless you’re a radical Stallmanist, this is not a bad thing.
So what is broken? If the OSP crowd is hoping for some future utopia where open source developers are able to earn their living exclusively through FOSS development, they’re on a different planet.
There’s a widespread myth that there are many FOSS maintainers who are desperately overworked and could crack at any time. Or as this XKCD quoted on the OSP web site) puts it:
But is this true? Is the xz backdoor truly a harbinger of things to come, or was it a single isolated incident? Paying the developer in this case would have not changed anything except funnel money to the Russian government. The attack was very sophisticated.
No one is forced to write FOSS software. Coming along after the fact and expecting to be paid for it seems a bit strange to me. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with paying FOSS developers. If OSP succeeds, that’s great. But I’m skeptical of both its changes of success and the justifications it’s using.
What do you think?
I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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