subsidizing FOSS development
Fellow blogger, Bruno Lowagie, posted some items on how the (Belgian) government could (or should) compensate FOSS developers for the products they create, a lot of which are being actively used by the government themselves.
Now, before I go into his suggestions, I first want to say that the way the Belgian government is trying to extort money from him because of an interpretation-error of his tax form for advertising income from his FOSS project site is disgusting. It amounts to nothing else than theft and extortion in my view and it poses a real danger to all FOSS developers in Belgium. If that is the way they are going to treat a community, then they really do not deserve the right to use FOSS software at all.
Now, this post poses an very intersting question. How could the government create a fair system for funding FOSS development. Bruno dismisses categorizing FOSS developers a bit like we do artists, suggesting that the government should buy a license for each piece of FOSS they use.
I can see his issues with the artist suggestion given that it's even badly implemented for traditional artists today. But going the license way brings about even more problems in my opinion.
First, how can the government buy a license form a hobby-programmer that does not work as a freelancer or has a company that can make invoices? Or will they only fund FOSS development if it is done by a company?
Secondly, what about projects that form part of other projects? Lets' say they pay me to use my project, eLAS, will they also pay NuSOAP and AdoDB, both of wich are included in my product under the terms of the LGPL. And what about software bundled into distributions, is it enough to pay RedHat or Canonical or do the makers of the components that make up this product also get compensation?
And lastly, if it's GPL and even though you can charge money for binary distributions, it's not licenses you can sell (unless you dual-license which a lot of FOSS developers are unwilling to do).
My opinion is that neither of these approaches will work in the end and I think we need to create a seperate solution to this because I do feel that the government should be financially backing FOSS software.
Comments
9 comments posted"""And lastly, if it's GPL and even though you can charge money for binary distributions, it's not licenses you can sell (unless you dual-license which a lot of FOSS developers are unwilling to do). """
Absolutely wrong, you CAN sell a GPL licensed work under GPL, you just can't restrict the rights of the recipient. So they also can give or sell the software to other people and everyone you distribute to becomes a potential competitor.
I wish people would stop with this idiocy that says GPL is anti capitalist. It just makes it fair, not impossible. What you have to think about is development, not software. software that is already written is already payed for, software that isn't written yet needs to be paid for.
pay a developer
Agreed that this would be nice, but again it would not allow the government to pay an arbitrary developer of a project to implement something or just subsidize that project because it is usefull to society.
I would like to see a system where a government body has a budget to subsidize FOSS projects, even those that have spare-time developers instead of employees working on them.
There is something wrong in the logic that 'the government should pay for FOSS'. What about companies?
Why must my goverment spend my tax money on FOSS when a company, using the exact same software, does not have to pay anything? I don't get it.
FOSS developers that want money for their software have chosen the wrong licensing model.
Don't the companies have to pay taxes to the government too ? Then it would all be about public + companies funding FOSS development, and the state supervizing it ?
Actually, I don't think the government should pay for a license or for any piece of FOSS they use. But I do think some of our tax money should be set aside to subsidize FOSS development in Belgium like we do for culture and arts because ultimately everyone does benefit from it.
Most of the proposals do actually achieve this focus on payments to companies or freelancers modifying FOSS programs, but I feel that it would be beneficial to our society to fund general FOSS development.
well, one of the key ways a lot of companies (in the IT industry at least) contribute to open source is by hiring developers to work on the open source projects full-time.
it would be nice if the government hired a developer (or two) just to work on various projects they find important.
a developer's full-salary would be a bit much for a lot of organisations wanting to do something like that though. perhaps we need a site/project/hub which will allow companies donate money every month on a subscription basis, and they use the totals to pay developers to work on open-source projects full-time.
The answer is simple, whenever the government has some software need that isn't fulfilled, they should pay someone to implement that and get it merged into the relevant pieces of software. Preferably someone already involved with that software so it is easier to merge.
I agree that they should definately do that, but that again limits them to FOSS developers working under a company or on a Freelance basis, which excludes anyone who does FOSS development in his free time and has a day job (like myself).
Say they wanted to use a modified version of eLAS and want to pay me for that, I would have to register as a freelancer as a second occupation, this means paying quarterly RSZ contributions, filling out an extra tax form and paying extra taxes on what I earn. This has significant downsides, first off that I could not do that on a one-time basis, second that I would have a lot of costs which will probably not be covered by what they are likely to pay me if I do not keep freelancing on a continues basis.