this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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From: Alejandro Colomar <alx-AT-kernel.org>

Hi all,

As you know, I've been maintaining the Linux man-pages project for the last 4 years as a voluntary. I've been doing it in my free time, and no company has sponsored that work at all. At the moment, I cannot sustain this work economically any more, and will temporarily and indefinitely stop working on this project. If any company has interests in the future of the project, I'd welcome an offer to sponsor my work here; if so, please let me know.

Have a lovely day! Alex

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Everything needs to be slapped with the AGPL. Fuck corporate America

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 months ago (10 children)

AGPL doesn't help. AGPL authors are explicitly pro-corporate use

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

AGPL on documentation? What would that do?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Things like this make me wish I was a tech CEO. I'd totally be the guy ensuring we give back to projects if I was.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 months ago

That is part of why you're not a tech CEO. You're not supposed to have compassion! No investor would want that.

P.S. This is an attack on CEOs and investors, not on you :)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nah, the investors don't see it as a benefit to your growth to pay people you don't have to

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

10k for a company making millions annually is nothing, 1% or less. But split between some of these projects, especially the less appreciated or funded ones, can be life changing.

But you're unfortunately right

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[–] [email protected] 172 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This sounds like the sort of infrastructure project the Linux Foundation should be supporting.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I think its this site? https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

I don't see any option to give money. So he does not accept donations from users like you and me and only asks for sponsorship?

An alternate website can be found here: https://linux.die.net/man/ However, I don't know how much they differ.

Edit: What I don't like with both of these sites is, that they are powered by Google. I would like to see an alternative engine, at least an option to set it up. That's probably a reason why I never used it and actually wouldn't want to support it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (5 children)

You do realize that man pages don't live on the internet? The kernel.org one is the offical project website, as far as I know, but the project itself is very much not for the web presense, but for the vastly useful documentation included on your distribution.

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

You do realize that man pages don’t live on the internet?

What part of my reply is this an answer to? I know we have our man pages offline. But the website here is online and they use Google as a search machine. My critique is using Google and not providing an alternative search machine setup.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean that the product made in here is not the website and I can well understand that the developer has no interest of spending time for it as it's not beneficial to the actual project he's been working with. And I can also understand that he doesn't want to receive donations from individuals as that would bring in even more work to manage which is time spent off the project. A single sponsor with clearly agreed boundaries is far more simple to manage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I see, it was a reply to me why he isn't accepting donations from individuals. The given reason here makes sense.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

He absolutely deserves it.

[–] [email protected] 236 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 158 points 2 months ago (4 children)

In my opinion it's criminal just how often this happens. Big business making obscene profit off the back of volunteer work like yours and many others across the OSS community.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (8 children)

That's why the current state of open source licenses doesn't work. Commercial use should be forbidden for free users. You could dual license the work, with a single, main license applying to everyone, and a second addendum license that just contains the clause for that specific use, be it personal or corporate. Corporate use of any kind requires supporting the project financially.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm a single dude who sells custom electronics with open source software on them. I sell maybe two PCBs a month. It just about covers my hobby, I'm not even living off of it. I can't afford commercial licenses. There has to be tiers.

In return, I've made every schematic, gerber file, and bill of material to my stuff freely available.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

I hope we see an evolution of licensing. Giant companies shouldn't get a free pass if they're just going to treat the original devs like a commodity to be used up.

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Germany has a Sovereign Tech Fund for exactly this, and while it's not perfect, it's one of the better uses of my tax euros.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's criminal to let someone do the thing he actively volunteers to do? It's criminal to use software that someone intentionally puts out into the world as free?

If you're willing yo do something for free, people are going to let you 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (9 children)

It's criminal the propaganda that lead people like this developer to believe they should do the work for free, and not worry, because the corporate world always gives back :)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Definitely agree, maybe it’s time to share Paul Ramsey’s talk on the subject again

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Bruce Perens is currently working on a new licensing model called Post Open requiring that business with sufficient revenue to pay up.

https://postopen.org/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I doubt it. It is basically equivalent to buying a proprietary software license for 1% of a revenue. I doubt any large business would be willing to spend that much on a single piece of software. And it would always be only one piece of software at a time.

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

Still better than being exploited

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