Post #3239234

2025-11-11 08:00 UTC

@sebastian@phpc.social Very good article! The problem is that very few for-profit companies will voluntarily donate to such projects simply because their shareholders will never vote to pay for something they can get for free. The larger the company, the less it’s ready to pay. The actual devs and architects may fully understand how serious the situation is, the problem is at the CFO level. The devs simply won’t get budget approved for such things - been there, done that. The CFO might even understand it too, the problem is in the freeriding and cost cutting culture of the shareholders. It’s the same thing about caching - not caching costs them nothing, introducing caching costs their devs time. Freeriding logic at its best… The solution is very simple - licensing. Large companies do care about legal aspect and if the repositories will introduce mandatory fee depending on number of package downloads or even a small flat fee for everyone, and legal will promptly deliver a reason to pay to CFOs.

Replies (3)

@heiglandreas@phpc.social 2025-11-11 10:01

@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl I found that advertising that as an insurance that the free tool continues to be usable and that bugfixes are provided changes the viewpoint of shareholders. @sebastian@phpc.social

Open ##3239235
@Di4na@hachyderm.io 2025-11-11 10:11

@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl @sebastian@phpc.social you forget an essential element. FOSS won because of no licensing, not because it was free but because it avoided having the engineers justify to procurement and legal the need for something, then 6 months of contract signing plus a yearly contract shakedown. This is not about the tag price. This is about the organisational cost. If you ask for licensing, engineers will just stop using it. Not because of the price. Because they want to get the job done

Open ##3239238
@paulshryock@phpc.social 2026-05-10 21:51

@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl @sebastian@phpc.social I agree with this. I've asked my manager's manager to donate some money to open source contributors whose packages we depend on, and they said it was not possible to make room in the budget. My point is that (some) software engineers generally get this and would love nothing more than for their company to support open source. Those who decide on budgets, not so much.

Open ##3239240