I lead open source projects for the United Kingdom National Health Service, specifically for NHS Wales Digital Health and Care. The UK is investing significantly in open source and publishing widely about the importance of open source.
If you're technical and curious, I'm currently porting the UK NHS design system from Nunjucks to more implementations, including vanilla HTML CSS TypeScript, and my personal favorite Svelte Tailwind Daisy UI. Claude Code is churning on it right now.
20 years ago I gave Dries the domain Drupal.com for free to support open source.
I recently gave the domain MrBeast.org to Beast Philanthropy.
But more important than Open Source is Freedom. I recently acquired the domain antifascist.org to fight the rise of fascism. This will be a website to share information on protecting your loved ones - it will be open source in that everyone can contribute.
I welcome anyone that wants to help - send an email or use the contact form on the website.
opendomain 4 hours ago [-]
I forgot to mention - I won the lottery!
I won the 2nd prize of the recent Powerball - $50,000 and I am donating it to the new AntiFascist foundation.
I am NOT rich. This money could have a significant impact on my life. But I wanted to help others and so I am showing my commitment to fight for Freedom.
I have run OpenDomain for 25 years and have contributed domains to Open Source worth millions all for Free. I am ending that project to fight the rise of fascism.
That sounds really great, but right now the site is still 80% template text/pages. I'll check back and make a donation once it's ready and lists the non-profit receiving the money.
opendomain 16 minutes ago [-]
That is awesome!
We have registered as a non-profit as “AntiFascist Foundation” and should finalize our paperwork this week.
Please note that since the goal is social activism, we are a 501c4 and donations may not be tax deductible.
We also would love any help on the design or messaging - any help would be greatly appreciated. Contact me and you can be part of the project
securesaml 7 hours ago [-]
I agree that open source infrastructure needs to be funded. I think first there needs to be a mindset shift in who's responsible for open source.
Currently when new vulnerabilities pop up (i.e. xz-utils compromise, log4j shell), people are quick to blame the maintainers for it. Why shouldn't companies instead be responsible for these vulnerabilities?
Currently, companies treat open source code as someone else's, so they don't bother to audit, maintain it, or fund it.
Clearly, this is wrong, and reflected in the oss license, which states that code is solely consumer's responsibility.
pabs3 1 hours ago [-]
The EU CRA law is going to fix that, companies will responsible for the open source code in the products they sell.
7 hours ago [-]
mlinksva 2 hours ago [-]
Fairly comprehensive and good blog post. Possibly too new to make it in, a proposal to take the learnings of the German STF (mentioned in the post) and expand it to the EU level for the next budget cycle (2028-2035) https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/
frankdejonge 5 hours ago [-]
I’ve given up on hopes of having funding on open source. My open source packages account for about 1.2% of all PHP code downloaded from Packagist (package manager) but unless there is a commercial effort behind it, I do not see it happening. A couple devs in highly hyped companies is able to generate a following big enough to solicit some non trivial amount of funding but the majority just doesn’t care enough about it to fund it. In the end, is open source maintainers are stupid enough to give our code away for free, so who’s really to blame for this. Perhaps it’s an overly pessimistic view, but not a view that has historically been disproven.
bayindirh 5 hours ago [-]
MIT is pumped to enable current ecosystem, precisely. Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable.
GPL & AGPL is effective against that, but companies are afraid of it since it tells "code is a collaborative effort, and you have to share what you did with the code".
Because of this, I share most of the code I write for myself, and strictly use (A)GPLv3 as a license. I don't care what companies do or what riches I possibly ignore. My principles are not for sale.
Being responsible generates no value for the shareholders. Being able to be reckless and ignore everyone while making business is.
Don't get distracted. It's about monies.
securesaml 5 hours ago [-]
> Companies say "This my code when I need it, and it's your code when it breaks", and developers read the fine print very late, because they thought exposure is valuable.
I think that this is an accurate description of working relationship. But, the fine print (MIT license) explicitly says that the companies are responsible:
> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED
bayindirh 5 hours ago [-]
That line allows shifting the blame upstream without any friction.
Exhibit A: Company X uses library Y by Mr. Z., which is used by another 100 or so companies. Mr. Z. is happy because he's quasi-famous because of all the exposure. A bug has been found in Y by users of Company X, which is not interested in fixing it.
- Users: Hey Company X, this feature provided by libY is broken.
- Company X: This makes us lose money, but it's complicated. Tell Mr. Z.
- Mr. Z: There's no warranty whatsoever.
- Company X: You either fix it, or we spread the word that you're irresponsible and everyone will inevitably migrate to libW.
- Mr. Z: OK. Lemme look at that.
Mr Z. drops everything, fixes problem, maybe gets a Thanks!, and might feel better. Company X and other hundred gets free labor for their problems, and one person burns out.
Why? Because nobody tried to understand how GPL works, and companies said MIT or no cookie points anyway.
So, another developer is bought with hope vapor. He gets nothing in the end, while the company is printing money in two ways by not buying an expensive library and selling its capabilities.
The GPL can't solve the FOSS funding situation, its relatively easy to comply with, and still not send any money (nor code) back upstream to maintainers.
fph 4 hours ago [-]
Do you think this would work?
- Mr. Z: There's no warranty whatsoever. However, I might fix it for a small consulting fee.
- Company X: You either fix it, or we spread the word that you're irresponsible and everyone will inevitably migrate to libW.
- Mr. Z: Ok, and I'll spread the word that you are a cheapskate.
bayindirh 4 hours ago [-]
Can you give me an example when it did happen or it did indeed work?
fph 4 hours ago [-]
I don't claim to have first-hand experience, that was just a suggestion. But there is a recent study on how maintainers respond to bug bounties here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.07670 .
bayindirh 4 hours ago [-]
Thanks! Got the paper, will read ASAP, hopefully. At the meantime, I have added a couple of real world examples to the comment you originally replied.
So there's some more words from the mouth of the people inside this.
The title of the linked HN story is "Microsoft offered FFmpeg small one-time payment instead of support contract".
So FFmpeg said that they need a contract for that, and they have given a couple thousand dollars as a one-time contribution.
I mean, "a few thousand dollars" for something underpinning Teams, is unacceptable. They probably charge 10x much for a small client for their yearly license.
C'mon now. This is not even satire.
securesaml 3 hours ago [-]
I agree MSFT should have paid way more.
My point is if that FFmpeg, tried to raise more awareness of the issue, say talk to news outlets, they could get much more funding from MSFT.
Furthermore, big companies like Google, Microsoft care a lot about security. So they could raise money for security engineering like fixing memory corruption issues.
Of course, FFmpeg could complain Google, Microsft doesn't care about all the
high severity vulnerabilities in FFmpeg.
That would be much more of an eye catcher.
godshatter 1 hours ago [-]
More realistically, users are going to say "Hey Company X, this feature is broken." They won't know or care about libY. I would have replied with "There's no warranty whatsoever. Please submit a bug report and we will prioritize it accordingly. We do accept pull requests."
The bug might have low impact in most cases but doesn't work with how Company X is using libY, so it might not get fixed for a while. If this is hurting them, they can fix it themselves and submit a PR. Or they can work with them to prioritize their bug, which puts them on the other foot. If it's a huge problem that affects half the web, then Mr. Z will be working on it anyway.
If I were Mr. Z, I would know the problems Company X will have replacing libY with libW, and wish them the best of luck if they bring it up. No one's paying me, if they want to use something else, good riddance. Especially if they are threatening me. But I get it, people are different.
jefftk 4 hours ago [-]
Instead, we can spread the idea that maintainers don't owe you anything, and that it's normal for them to decline and/or ask for compensation.
Z should ignore or publicize the threat, not give in to it.
(If someone tried this approach with software I maintain I would absolutely not fix their problem.)
bayindirh 4 hours ago [-]
Please see what Daniel has shared today. Link is in the comment you replied to.
Open Source software became so common that the tragedy of the commons applies to it. IOW, there'll be always someone who will accept exposure as a valid form of payment either being very rich or being desperate or not caring.
jefftk 3 hours ago [-]
I did read that link before commenting, and there's nothing in there about users damaging Daniel's reputation after he declines to do free work for them?
> there'll be always someone who will accept exposure as a valid form of payment either being very rich or being desperate or not caring
Why is this, especially in the cases of being rich or not caring about compensation, a problem? I have done a lot of Open Source work for free, and a lot of Open Source work while paid by companies, and I don't feel like I've been exploited or otherwise mistreated in either case.
bayindirh 3 hours ago [-]
It's not a problem, it's just a fact. I personally don't care about the compensation either, but not everyone is motivated the same about developing software.
On the other hand, I believe requesting somebody's time for free is unethical, esp. if you are a company and wanting something from other parties at a certain quality at a certain time.
Somebody using your code and getting business done with it might not feel exploitative, and it might be true for you, and me. However, if they demand support from you, in X hours, at Y quality, and expecting you to "stop, drop and roll" for them, now that's exploitative. This is what I'm trying to say.
Many young people, who happened to write good code and their good code picked up by corporations are exploited like that. Not all of them know the better or have the gravitas to tell "go fix yourself", and this allows exploitation to continue.
I'm very grateful for people who write this code to enable this massive and wonderful ecosystem. I try to help them by filing high quality bug reports, submitting patches if I can and monetarily support a couple of them. I'm not against open source, but prefer Free Software more, because it's fairer towards the developers and the users. I don't like companies running away with someone's effort and come back and low-key threaten for free work.
Also, again talking about Microsoft, there's the WinGet/AppGet saga, which is ugly in its own right.
jefftk 3 hours ago [-]
> Not all of them know the better or have the gravitas to tell "go fix yourself", and this allows exploitation to continue.
Agreed there, but then this is what I think we should be arguing for. Not "companies are wrong to use software without paying" but "companies are wrong to demand work from (and especially to make threats to) volunteers" and "volunteer maintainers should be well supported by the community (and anticipate such) when they decline to extend software".
bayindirh 2 hours ago [-]
> Agreed there, but then this is what I think we should be arguing for.
I mean, the original comment (by me) you replied to is intended to portray a scenario where the company threatens the developer for not fixing a bug which affects the company in short notice, for free.
Or, did I word it wrong?
jefftk 2 hours ago [-]
Possibly I read more into your comment than you were trying to say, but I interpreted you as saying "and so we should shame companies for not paying" as opposed to "and so we should shame companies for threatening"?
carlosjobim 17 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorry, but what kind of fantasy is this? Here's how it works in reality:
- Customers: Hey Company X, this feature provided by libY is broken.
- Company X: This makes us lose money, but it's complicated. Tell Mr. Z.
- Customers: We don't care who Mr. Z is or who is responsible. If your company does not fix the problem we are going to fucking kill you.
No paying customer will ever accept that a company tries to shift the blame to somebody else. So Mr. Z is free to ignore anything that company asks from him, reputation intact.
sexyman48 3 hours ago [-]
stupid to give our code away for free
Most professional developers aren't that stupid. The problem is
students, and the underemployed more broadly, write code to make a name
for themselves, which isn't entirely irrational.
fennecfoxy 7 hours ago [-]
The public barely want to fund public infrastructure, for the electricity they use, the water they drink. And especially not for the electricity and water that their neighbours, or people across town, or people somewhere else in the country need.
Fomite 5 hours ago [-]
This was my thought. "...like public infrastructure" means underfunding and neglect.
kruffalon 7 hours ago [-]
Yes we do, who do you think is "the public"?
Most people like working societies and a huge part of that is reliable infrastructure.
graemep 6 hours ago [-]
I think it is an illusion created by people rich enough to pay for things themselves. it is easy for those with the loudest voices to pass as "the public".
kruffalon 2 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing more like people who think they are rich enough to pay for it themselves.
My guess is that real rich people love public funded stuff as it's basically free for them.
OtherShrezzing 5 hours ago [-]
There's precedent for this type of thing in the EU. They sponsor(ed?) the bug bounty program for VLC Media Player[0] for example, among a few other OSS projects.
If it's anything like hs2, we'll hire thousands of consultants on huge day rates who have zero incentive to ever build anything. Not an ideal model for open source funding.
tgma 10 hours ago [-]
I would be much more excited in finding ways to fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime rather than going the other way around. If anything, academic open source which is the closest alternative has not really produced much and the production open source that actually works is by and large corporate-sponsored.
P.S. The article also opens by contrasting open source consumption and contribution. In a certain sense, as the article acknowledges later, I care much much more about government consuming free software, as a neutral platform to avoid lock-in for themselves and the taxpayer, as well as providing an open foundation for integration and letting people use free software if they choose to (and not lock them to iOS and Android, for instance.) That alone is one of the biggest ways they can contribute. The actual code contribution will come naturally if they do that.
ndiddy 5 hours ago [-]
> That alone is one of the biggest ways they can contribute. The actual code contribution will come naturally if they do that.
The article claims that this is not happening:
> Procurement practices often make the problem worse. Contracts are typically awarded to the lowest bidder or to large, well-known IT vendors rather than those with deep Open Source expertise and a track record of contributing back. Companies that help maintain Open Source projects are often undercut by firms that give nothing in return. This creates a race to the bottom that ultimately weakens the Open Source projects governments rely on.
> The European Commission runs more than a hundred Drupal sites, France operates over a thousand Drupal sites, and Australia's government has standardized on Drupal as its national digital platform. Yet despite this widespread use, most of these institutions contribute little back to Drupal's development or maintenance.
e40 9 hours ago [-]
Generally the people working on academic oss have other incentives (degree, research) and they are often on the inexperienced side.
If it was a primary function and was staffed independently of educational programs, it could work and be a great teaching tool for actual students.
graemep 6 hours ago [-]
Research is not carried out by the inexperienced!
e40 29 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, most of it is. I got a look behind the curtain when when my son got a master's. His PI was wrote a huge Python program then left and he inherited it. The new PI is completely clueless. They all have other, more pressing things to do, instead of doing proper software engineering.
When I was at UCB in the 80's, a lot of incredible things happened (Berkeley UNIX), but they had a LOT of staff members that did a lot of the work. And that had PhD students (Bill Joy, Sam Leffler) who were insanely smart and spent most of their time doing proper engineering on their projects. And, btw, I was one of those staff members. I saw all aspects of it, because the project I was on was used by a lot of people in the CS dept.
I wasn't actually criticizing anyone. I think it's just the way it is.
awjlogan 5 hours ago [-]
Much of the actual day to day work is. Typically graduate students, so they’ll be 22-26. That’s not a critique of their intelligence or potential. Students get progressively more experienced of course, but professors aren’t writing code most of the time.
A problem with academia in general is the lack of staff positions. Post docs finish their time then it’s either leave academia or become a professor. There’s few positions for those who want to just do research as a career, rather than pushing for a professorship. This means there isn’t a stable and experienced core of people.
graemep 5 hours ago [-]
Academics in CS seem to write quite a lot?
Obviously slanted to certain areas (OSes and languages, rather than say word processors), relevant to research, but still.
It has not historically quite important.
Of course, it would be great to fund experienced people just to do this - and a better use of the money currently subsidising commercial R & D at the moment in many countries.
KingMob 8 hours ago [-]
Not sure why you think academic open source is the closest alternative. The article doesn't mention academia, but does explicitly name govt-run public goods like roads, fire departments, etc.
I think looking at those is much more instructive as to what govt-funded FOSS might be like.
tgma 8 hours ago [-]
Because we already have some government funded open source run by academics, so that is a grounded approximation of how well or poorly it could look like.
I don't know where you live, but I hope OpenSSL is not developed like the roads I drive on. That's not some grand aspiration.
pm215 3 hours ago [-]
I think the thing about academic open source is that the government is not "funding open source" -- they're funding research, and all the incentives and measurements and funding criteria are set up (give-or-take) to drive towards "better research". Any open source software produced is a by-product. A hypothetical "government funded open source" would hopefully have criteria and incentives that drive towards better software...
JimDabell 9 hours ago [-]
> fund public infrastructure like Amazon does Prime
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this?
tgma 9 hours ago [-]
A capitalist institution, in this case Amazon, charges some basic tax for providing basic services, e.g. package delivery, that have overlap with traditionally public infrastructure, but executes at a higher quality.
One could imagine something like RedHat or a quasi-coop Apache Foundation that actually employs high-quality people and pays them to develop code and sells subscription/support.
tempeler 1 hours ago [-]
To support open source projects and developers, a GitHub-like platform managed by a nonprofit organization should be established, and it should issue its own token. Similarly, a fair system that distributes these tokens according to developers’ contributions would be much more appropriate.
sirwitti 10 hours ago [-]
Just in case people don't realize, the author is Dries Buytaert who created drupal.
sam_lowry_ 10 hours ago [-]
Once successful PHP-based CMS that succumbed to in-fighting, poor code and excessive drug use among its top proponents?
sirwitti 10 hours ago [-]
Why once successful?
But more importantly, tell me more about the scandals, I love good gossip :)
wltr 6 hours ago [-]
Does anyone work with it these days? I haven’t heard of it for like a decade or two. Truly curious what’s up with it. As honestly, I thought php is long dead, but it looks like it isn’t. I remember WordPress as a much better alternative (in my humble opinion), but perhaps someone still uses it somewhere and can comment. Would really love to learn the state of Drupal in 2025.
ongytenes 2 hours ago [-]
I would be concerned how a future government would want to regulate open source if they took it over.
pacifika 7 hours ago [-]
Good article. Could come across a bit like an unintentional bait and switch from the other point of view though, these projects love to see adoption but then require funding to maintain? Maybe setting the project up more commercially that then self funds the open source platform like Laravel is a more sustainable model?
Perhaps open source should update its license so that businesses profiting from it contribute a small portion of their earnings — say, 1% — to a global fund, whether allocated specifically to the open source maintainers and contributors or to the Decentralized Universal Kindness Income (DUKI /djuːki/) for all lives worldwide.
Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.
bdcravens 2 hours ago [-]
In some places, funding public infrastructure like public infrastructure has barely proven to be successful and sustainable. Some places are underfunded, and it shows, and other places are well-funded but in crippling debt.
fontsgenerator 1 hours ago [-]
Treating open source as public infrastructure makes sense—so many critical projects run on volunteer labor, yet the whole ecosystem depends on them.
2 hours ago [-]
mhh__ 5 hours ago [-]
Governments should do this, but as a but as a way to create value and do things that are strategic but not locally optimal. Not just because some lawyer writes in some extra funding for ffmpeg (or whatever).
Small teams making software to solve problems, and then gradually aiming to hire for end users to be able to code (this is a good way of achieving the "less people, higher salaries" dream)
If we treat it as infra then I fear slightly that we'd end up like the Victorian to modern transition where the idea of public infrastructure being run by the people who built lots of it in the first place is unimaginable i.e. Britain's railways and many roads were built to make money, but we are now (I'd argue) so risk adverse and allergic to prices being allowed to signal anything that we would never actually allow this to happen now.
flowerthoughts 11 hours ago [-]
Perhaps make open source work tax deductible, just like charity donations?
tgma 10 hours ago [-]
Isn't it already? You deduct the salary expense from your corporate profits.
chii 11 hours ago [-]
but what would be the deducted amount, in dollar value, when the work is voluntary? Do you get assigned a dollar value per line, per hour worked, or you just guestimate?
SkipperCat 4 hours ago [-]
Isn't this what the "Freemium" model is supposed to resolve? If a open source package is popular, people will build businesses around it and people who use it can then purchase support and get bonus features.
This allows the marketplace to determine which project get supported rather than bureaucratic decree.
securesaml 4 hours ago [-]
It's usually the more user-facing products that can thrive on this freemium model (probably full web apps or a lot of code). For example, laravel might get a lot of funding from this.
However, the underlying infrastructure libraries, will not get any funding from this, even though they have much more users. For example, libxml2, xzutils, http parser ...
You can't build any product off of an infrastructure library, purchasing support doesn't make sense, and there are little bonus features to be made.
One way to remedy this, is to have well funded open source projects take ownership of its dependencies.
didgetmaster 4 hours ago [-]
Careful what you wish for. Government funding almost always comes with strings attached. Once a project becomes dependent on government, they will call the shots. Do what they want or get your funds yanked! This could include stuff like coding back doors for the NSA or implementing spyware.
teppix 3 hours ago [-]
Like already mentioned, this is not in any way unique to open source software.
On the contrary, being open source adds the opportunity to understand what the software does on a deeper level, and you can always fork (Librewolf is one of many examples that comes to mind).
Do you have any examples where large entities taking over open source project having lead to the project's total demise? This sort of thing happens all the time the in the commercial space.
It of course also happens to some extent to open source projects, but usually that results in forks if the demand is high enough. For commercial software, you don't have many options - especially for subscription based licensing, which is pretty much the norm nowadays.
nordcikmgsdf 3 hours ago [-]
Isn't that how it works now too? Contributors are often contracted companies that develop features that they upstream. If you don't do what the company tells you, you won't be able to upstream any features on their dime
3 hours ago [-]
zoobab 6 hours ago [-]
The money of running Linux in government is probably already flowing to the US, in the pockets of Redhat and IBM.
zihotki 6 hours ago [-]
Quite often the public infrastructure (at least in some EU countries) is funded in the way so that the investors give the funds and then a small fee is collected and used to pay for the loan and maintenance. Sometimes after the loan is fully paid the infra usage fees are waived.
This is something like commercial open source
maelito 6 hours ago [-]
It's hard to count but my guess is that in France, the French government is the main creator of open-source software in France.
Contribution to existing projects lacks behind, but it's getting better.
vitonsky 7 hours ago [-]
One yet another narrative that claim all people owe to an open source.
I believe, once in deep future, an open source developers will grown and stop repeating this sectarian mantra.
No one owes you anything. If you do opensource and you need in money - use your open source as marketing tool to promote services you sell.
I think those who believe a companies will pay to you for a random OSS is just a kids. Ask people who can use a sheets, they explain you why your product will die with this approach.
rglullis 7 hours ago [-]
No one owes anything to any particular project or developer.
The thing to understand about discussions around funding FOSS projects is that it should be clear that society as a whole would benefit immensely from a strategic investment in commons-based software infrastructure.
squigz 7 hours ago [-]
Quite literally the entire world owes a lot to open source, as countless open source projects power IT globally.
Ekaros 7 hours ago [-]
A society would owe something to person picking up trash in their free time. But I am pretty sure society will never end up paying even minimum wage for that labour...
It is similar to open source... Something has value and is good for society, but society neither has willingness or ways to reward it.
kevingadd 7 hours ago [-]
Where I live in Seattle we fund keeping the streets in good condition. I see city staff roaming around during the day from time to time wearing hi-vis, doing stuff like picking up trash or removing graffiti.
If trash is lying around only getting picked up by generous citizens in their spare time, what that implies is that the city/county have chosen not to invest in maintaining the streets, and the citizens have elected to throw trash everywhere. I don't think we should take either of those conditions as a given. Better things are possible.
fsflover 7 hours ago [-]
So because it's wrong in your picking-trash example, it should remain wrong with FLOSS too?
vitonsky 7 hours ago [-]
How exactly this vision will make money for you?
Currently it sounds you just a kid who want to be paid. Is there anything more except "you all owe to me" in this claim?
squigz 6 hours ago [-]
Quite interesting that I didn't mention money, but that seems to be the only language many people speak. Anyway, maybe go ask the Blender folks (and I'm quite sure others can provide some more examples)
Also, please read the HN guidelines [0]
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
You don't know anything about me, including my age, nor my motivations or history.
sure. But companies believe that open source developers owe everything to the them (i.e. fixing bugs, contributing to feature requests, critical security releases ...).
Woodi 8 hours ago [-]
yes, yes, everybody know that now...
but software is just not-a-base thing - it needs cpu's, computers. If you want
realy independence do base thing - computer hardware ! Make small hardware that just can run Linux, can display things and use keyboard and mouse... Do eg. Dennmark do this ? Or Bosh ? Or...
Computers just to connect to internet and send some messages via IRC or something... ;)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/
If you're technical and curious, I'm currently porting the UK NHS design system from Nunjucks to more implementations, including vanilla HTML CSS TypeScript, and my personal favorite Svelte Tailwind Daisy UI. Claude Code is churning on it right now.
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/public-good-design-sy...
AMA. And we're hiring. Feel free to message me.
https://www.sovereign.tech/ https://nlnet.nl/
React implementation : https://github.com/codegouvfr/react-dsfr
Main website : https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/version-courante/fr
20 years ago I gave Dries the domain Drupal.com for free to support open source.
I recently gave the domain MrBeast.org to Beast Philanthropy.
But more important than Open Source is Freedom. I recently acquired the domain antifascist.org to fight the rise of fascism. This will be a website to share information on protecting your loved ones - it will be open source in that everyone can contribute.
I welcome anyone that wants to help - send an email or use the contact form on the website.
I am NOT rich. This money could have a significant impact on my life. But I wanted to help others and so I am showing my commitment to fight for Freedom.
I have run OpenDomain for 25 years and have contributed domains to Open Source worth millions all for Free. I am ending that project to fight the rise of fascism.
I welcome ANY help or criticism - https://Antifascist.org
We have registered as a non-profit as “AntiFascist Foundation” and should finalize our paperwork this week.
Please note that since the goal is social activism, we are a 501c4 and donations may not be tax deductible.
We also would love any help on the design or messaging - any help would be greatly appreciated. Contact me and you can be part of the project
Currently when new vulnerabilities pop up (i.e. xz-utils compromise, log4j shell), people are quick to blame the maintainers for it. Why shouldn't companies instead be responsible for these vulnerabilities?
Currently, companies treat open source code as someone else's, so they don't bother to audit, maintain it, or fund it. Clearly, this is wrong, and reflected in the oss license, which states that code is solely consumer's responsibility.
GPL & AGPL is effective against that, but companies are afraid of it since it tells "code is a collaborative effort, and you have to share what you did with the code".
Because of this, I share most of the code I write for myself, and strictly use (A)GPLv3 as a license. I don't care what companies do or what riches I possibly ignore. My principles are not for sale.
Being responsible generates no value for the shareholders. Being able to be reckless and ignore everyone while making business is.
Don't get distracted. It's about monies.
I think that this is an accurate description of working relationship. But, the fine print (MIT license) explicitly says that the companies are responsible:
> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
Exhibit A: Company X uses library Y by Mr. Z., which is used by another 100 or so companies. Mr. Z. is happy because he's quasi-famous because of all the exposure. A bug has been found in Y by users of Company X, which is not interested in fixing it.
Mr Z. drops everything, fixes problem, maybe gets a Thanks!, and might feel better. Company X and other hundred gets free labor for their problems, and one person burns out.Why? Because nobody tried to understand how GPL works, and companies said MIT or no cookie points anyway.
So, another developer is bought with hope vapor. He gets nothing in the end, while the company is printing money in two ways by not buying an expensive library and selling its capabilities.
Edit: One Daniel Stenberg of curl:// has dropped this: https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115025727082593712
Another (good) write up from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-pr...
The GPL can't solve the FOSS funding situation, its relatively easy to comply with, and still not send any money (nor code) back upstream to maintainers.
- Mr. Z: There's no warranty whatsoever. However, I might fix it for a small consulting fee.
- Company X: You either fix it, or we spread the word that you're irresponsible and everyone will inevitably migrate to libW.
- Mr. Z: Ok, and I'll spread the word that you are a cheapskate.
So there's some more words from the mouth of the people inside this.
So FFmpeg said that they need a contract for that, and they have given a couple thousand dollars as a one-time contribution.
I mean, "a few thousand dollars" for something underpinning Teams, is unacceptable. They probably charge 10x much for a small client for their yearly license.
C'mon now. This is not even satire.
My point is if that FFmpeg, tried to raise more awareness of the issue, say talk to news outlets, they could get much more funding from MSFT.
Furthermore, big companies like Google, Microsoft care a lot about security. So they could raise money for security engineering like fixing memory corruption issues. Of course, FFmpeg could complain Google, Microsft doesn't care about all the high severity vulnerabilities in FFmpeg. That would be much more of an eye catcher.
The bug might have low impact in most cases but doesn't work with how Company X is using libY, so it might not get fixed for a while. If this is hurting them, they can fix it themselves and submit a PR. Or they can work with them to prioritize their bug, which puts them on the other foot. If it's a huge problem that affects half the web, then Mr. Z will be working on it anyway.
If I were Mr. Z, I would know the problems Company X will have replacing libY with libW, and wish them the best of luck if they bring it up. No one's paying me, if they want to use something else, good riddance. Especially if they are threatening me. But I get it, people are different.
Z should ignore or publicize the threat, not give in to it.
(If someone tried this approach with software I maintain I would absolutely not fix their problem.)
Open Source software became so common that the tragedy of the commons applies to it. IOW, there'll be always someone who will accept exposure as a valid form of payment either being very rich or being desperate or not caring.
> there'll be always someone who will accept exposure as a valid form of payment either being very rich or being desperate or not caring
Why is this, especially in the cases of being rich or not caring about compensation, a problem? I have done a lot of Open Source work for free, and a lot of Open Source work while paid by companies, and I don't feel like I've been exploited or otherwise mistreated in either case.
On the other hand, I believe requesting somebody's time for free is unethical, esp. if you are a company and wanting something from other parties at a certain quality at a certain time.
Somebody using your code and getting business done with it might not feel exploitative, and it might be true for you, and me. However, if they demand support from you, in X hours, at Y quality, and expecting you to "stop, drop and roll" for them, now that's exploitative. This is what I'm trying to say.
Many young people, who happened to write good code and their good code picked up by corporations are exploited like that. Not all of them know the better or have the gravitas to tell "go fix yourself", and this allows exploitation to continue.
I'm very grateful for people who write this code to enable this massive and wonderful ecosystem. I try to help them by filing high quality bug reports, submitting patches if I can and monetarily support a couple of them. I'm not against open source, but prefer Free Software more, because it's fairer towards the developers and the users. I don't like companies running away with someone's effort and come back and low-key threaten for free work.
Also, again talking about Microsoft, there's the WinGet/AppGet saga, which is ugly in its own right.
Agreed there, but then this is what I think we should be arguing for. Not "companies are wrong to use software without paying" but "companies are wrong to demand work from (and especially to make threats to) volunteers" and "volunteer maintainers should be well supported by the community (and anticipate such) when they decline to extend software".
I mean, the original comment (by me) you replied to is intended to portray a scenario where the company threatens the developer for not fixing a bug which affects the company in short notice, for free.
Or, did I word it wrong?
Most professional developers aren't that stupid. The problem is students, and the underemployed more broadly, write code to make a name for themselves, which isn't entirely irrational.
Most people like working societies and a huge part of that is reliable infrastructure.
My guess is that real rich people love public funded stuff as it's basically free for them.
[0] - https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/vlc-patches-critical-flaw...
P.S. The article also opens by contrasting open source consumption and contribution. In a certain sense, as the article acknowledges later, I care much much more about government consuming free software, as a neutral platform to avoid lock-in for themselves and the taxpayer, as well as providing an open foundation for integration and letting people use free software if they choose to (and not lock them to iOS and Android, for instance.) That alone is one of the biggest ways they can contribute. The actual code contribution will come naturally if they do that.
The article claims that this is not happening:
> Procurement practices often make the problem worse. Contracts are typically awarded to the lowest bidder or to large, well-known IT vendors rather than those with deep Open Source expertise and a track record of contributing back. Companies that help maintain Open Source projects are often undercut by firms that give nothing in return. This creates a race to the bottom that ultimately weakens the Open Source projects governments rely on.
> The European Commission runs more than a hundred Drupal sites, France operates over a thousand Drupal sites, and Australia's government has standardized on Drupal as its national digital platform. Yet despite this widespread use, most of these institutions contribute little back to Drupal's development or maintenance.
If it was a primary function and was staffed independently of educational programs, it could work and be a great teaching tool for actual students.
When I was at UCB in the 80's, a lot of incredible things happened (Berkeley UNIX), but they had a LOT of staff members that did a lot of the work. And that had PhD students (Bill Joy, Sam Leffler) who were insanely smart and spent most of their time doing proper engineering on their projects. And, btw, I was one of those staff members. I saw all aspects of it, because the project I was on was used by a lot of people in the CS dept.
I wasn't actually criticizing anyone. I think it's just the way it is.
A problem with academia in general is the lack of staff positions. Post docs finish their time then it’s either leave academia or become a professor. There’s few positions for those who want to just do research as a career, rather than pushing for a professorship. This means there isn’t a stable and experienced core of people.
Obviously slanted to certain areas (OSes and languages, rather than say word processors), relevant to research, but still.
It has not historically quite important.
Of course, it would be great to fund experienced people just to do this - and a better use of the money currently subsidising commercial R & D at the moment in many countries.
I think looking at those is much more instructive as to what govt-funded FOSS might be like.
I don't know where you live, but I hope OpenSSL is not developed like the roads I drive on. That's not some grand aspiration.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this?
One could imagine something like RedHat or a quasi-coop Apache Foundation that actually employs high-quality people and pays them to develop code and sells subscription/support.
But more importantly, tell me more about the scandals, I love good gossip :)
https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.
Small teams making software to solve problems, and then gradually aiming to hire for end users to be able to code (this is a good way of achieving the "less people, higher salaries" dream)
If we treat it as infra then I fear slightly that we'd end up like the Victorian to modern transition where the idea of public infrastructure being run by the people who built lots of it in the first place is unimaginable i.e. Britain's railways and many roads were built to make money, but we are now (I'd argue) so risk adverse and allergic to prices being allowed to signal anything that we would never actually allow this to happen now.
This allows the marketplace to determine which project get supported rather than bureaucratic decree.
However, the underlying infrastructure libraries, will not get any funding from this, even though they have much more users. For example, libxml2, xzutils, http parser ...
You can't build any product off of an infrastructure library, purchasing support doesn't make sense, and there are little bonus features to be made.
One way to remedy this, is to have well funded open source projects take ownership of its dependencies.
On the contrary, being open source adds the opportunity to understand what the software does on a deeper level, and you can always fork (Librewolf is one of many examples that comes to mind).
Do you have any examples where large entities taking over open source project having lead to the project's total demise? This sort of thing happens all the time the in the commercial space.
It of course also happens to some extent to open source projects, but usually that results in forks if the demand is high enough. For commercial software, you don't have many options - especially for subscription based licensing, which is pretty much the norm nowadays.
This is something like commercial open source
Contribution to existing projects lacks behind, but it's getting better.
I believe, once in deep future, an open source developers will grown and stop repeating this sectarian mantra.
No one owes you anything. If you do opensource and you need in money - use your open source as marketing tool to promote services you sell.
It's simple as 2+2, I've mention it in my blog post https://vitonsky.net/blog/2025/06/24/open-source/
I think those who believe a companies will pay to you for a random OSS is just a kids. Ask people who can use a sheets, they explain you why your product will die with this approach.
The thing to understand about discussions around funding FOSS projects is that it should be clear that society as a whole would benefit immensely from a strategic investment in commons-based software infrastructure.
It is similar to open source... Something has value and is good for society, but society neither has willingness or ways to reward it.
If trash is lying around only getting picked up by generous citizens in their spare time, what that implies is that the city/county have chosen not to invest in maintaining the streets, and the citizens have elected to throw trash everywhere. I don't think we should take either of those conditions as a given. Better things are possible.
Currently it sounds you just a kid who want to be paid. Is there anything more except "you all owe to me" in this claim?
Also, please read the HN guidelines [0]
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
You don't know anything about me, including my age, nor my motivations or history.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
but software is just not-a-base thing - it needs cpu's, computers. If you want realy independence do base thing - computer hardware ! Make small hardware that just can run Linux, can display things and use keyboard and mouse... Do eg. Dennmark do this ? Or Bosh ? Or...
Computers just to connect to internet and send some messages via IRC or something... ;)