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Software as a public good (github.blog)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Open source software is essential to the global economy, public services, and international organizations, yet many critical projects remain underfunded, highlighting the need for sustainable support.

The United Nations and other public institutions are increasingly recognizing the importance of open source, with initiatives like the Global Digital Compact and various national funds dedicated to supporting open source projects.

GitHub is actively involved in bridging the sustainability gap through initiatives like GitHub Sponsors, the FOSS Sustainability Fund, and resources for open source maintainers, emphasizing the need for collaborative investment from both public and private sectors.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Money pwease!

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Github is a private company and as such unfit to protect open source.

What is needed is an autonomous, government funded organisation that will allow the world to get rid of companies making money off the FOSS ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The closest to that would be Codeberg. It's a nice initiative, and some big projects like LibreWolf are already using it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

get rid of companies making money off the FOSS

I'm afraid if we discourage companies from adopting open source we'll end up with even more closed source garbage.

There are industry sectors where closed source is the norm, and it just leads to more vendor lock-in and less standardization and interop.

I'm a bit young to say for sure, but I believe closed source was the norm in the software world 20-30 years ago and openness was stigmatized. I certainly don't want to live in that world.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I work for a company that makes money supporting FLOSS. Our members pay fairly hefty membership fees because they have a vested interest in their chips being well supported by Linux and the wider ecosystem. That money funds common projects they all benefit from all well as numerous maintainers in projects keeping those projects ticking.

The engineers on the project I mostly work on are predominantly paid to work on it. We value our hobbyist itch scratchers (~10% off contributors) but it's commercial money that keeps those patches reviewed and flowing.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Public good does not mean invitation into license violation, such as training AI models without consent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm ok with not considering it "public good" when something has a license that sets conditions and it's under Copyright of a particular private person/entity. But if you do need to ask consent to a private party for the use of something in a derivative work of certain conditions, then I don't think it makes sense to call it a public good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The "asking for consent" is just a paraphrase and not meant literally. AI tools will be trained by violating the license of GPL licensed code in example. And that I was referring to as "without consent".