Hi, Thanks for raising this subject! On Mon, Oct 14, 2024 at 04:26:52PM +0200, Vesna Manojlovic @ RIPE.net wrote:
Dear colleagues,
last week, "The Open Source Pledge" was launched, supported by 25 companies and 6 large foundations: https://opensourcepledge.com
The call is for every organisation that uses & depends on "Open Source software" to *pay* maintainers, (minimum of $2,000 per year per developer at your company) & to self-report annually in a blog post.
In addition to "about" pages, https://opensourcepledge.com/about/
There is also a blog post describing the "philosophy" behind it: https://vladh.net/the-philosophy-of-the-open-source-pledge/
... which ends with this "call to action" :
If you’re an employee, tell your company to pay the maintainers of the software it relies on. And if you’re a key decision maker such as a CEO, CFO or CTO? Do the right thing — it will benefit you, your brand, and the ecosystem you live and work in.
... I find it interesting, if a bit North-American-Centric...
What are your thought about this approach?
I am very happy this is now making it to the agenda.
Are there any European companies that would join?
And do you have other examples of funding FLOSS ? (in addition to the grants from NLNET, NGI, RIPE NCC Sovern Tech Fund (mentioned in the blog)... ).
Just one data point: I am a volunteer member of the Debian project, and at $dayjob, as a system administrator, I made it happen we are now paying https://www.freexian.com/ and using their ELTS support: we get security patches from Freexian for the older part of our Debian GNU/Linux server fleet. This is one way to make maintenance on Free Software more sustainable. HTH! Bye, Joost