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Open Source Infrastructure must be a publicly funded service. - Matrix.org (matrix.org)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So a public subsidy for big tech to get free code?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Big tech is already getting free code. This would simply fund the devs for the critical infrastructure. also if we force tax payer code to be GPL code it would force big tech code to also be GPLed. Which would significantly improve the current scenario.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I work for a US state agency that funds FOSS projects, and all projects that I write in-house or fund in the future will be GPL.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

More of this, please. Have you dealt with any pushback?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not on the stuff I write in-house. I haven't had any new external projects funded since I started here. I have asked for some current projects that are MIT to switch to GPL, but that's a can of worms, and none have pulled the trigger yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Gotcha, that's unfortunate. Fingers crossed, soon, and you'll be able to GPL that shit from the start! I hope you are successful in converting some projects to GPL. I have heard of some people going the other way from GPL to BSD because of their idea of what “freedom” means.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

If the public are paying for it, then it becomes a subsidy.

And good luck getting the US government to require the code to be GPLed. That’s even less likely to happen than a public subsidy for OSS at all.

They typically do the opposite and require “commercialization” to ensure the benefit of the publicly-funded technology is captured by their donors.

This is how it basically works in biotech, for example. Government grants to study the medicine and then when the scientists actually find something important it becomes a “public-private partnership” often without even a royalty for the public let alone making it a public good.

That’s not how government funding works in a modern democracy, unfortunately. It would amount to a cash transfer to big tech to make the public pay their R&D costs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

If the public are paying for it, then it becomes a subsidy.

I agree. And its a public good. It should be

And good luck getting the US government to require the code to be GPLed. That’s even less likely to happen than a public subsidy for OSS at all.

true but thats how it should be.

i agree. It's a problem but not doing anything just harms the FOSS ecosystem. We can help foster FOSS ecosystems while trying to cutrail big tech. Cause corporations gonna number line go up.