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Vittelius @feddit.org

2d ago

GitHub Wants the EU to Fund Open Source, But Who Should Really Pay?

www.omgubuntu.co.uk

GitHub Wants the EU to Fund Open Source, But Who Should Really Pay?

32 comments

Why is Github, as a U.S. company, not asking the U.S. to fund Open Source?
- Probably because the US government is insane.
  If Github is so adamant about funding open source, they can do it themselves, too (though I'm fully in favour of the EU funding FOSS). They are literally owned by Microsoft.
  
  The EU SHOULD fund open source, including but not limited to EU alternatives to GitHub.
  
  GitHub is offering quite a lot for free to FOSS (and public repos in general).
  I wonder how much cost they have for all the CI minutes they sponsor?
- The only way the US gov would fund open source software if they can be convinced it can be used to kill kids in the middle east
  
  TBH before the USA went totally batshit, they did fund a lot of open source software.
- And why is Github not making AI conpanies pay which just suck in all that Open Source code to monetize it without paying a penny?

Fund forgejo and Codeberg.
- Yeah - GitHub is an extreme risk for the software landscape. It's owned by Microsoft. Microsoft owns too much of the dev pipeline. They own GitHub. They own VS Code. They own npm. They own Azure. They are pushing the whole Copilot thing.
  You really do not want that kind of dependency on a single company. And you really do not wish to be sanctioned by US government and lose that.
- Oh, that would be a nice up yours. :D

What if EU only funds open source that is GPLv3 AND promises to aid the projects in litigation if someone breaks the license?
- I don't think they should limit themselves to just GPL. There are some other good (or even better) licenses out there, such as AGPL (I use this one on all my projects), MIT and so on.
  
  I haven't read up on AGPL. How does it differ from GPLv3? :)
  MIT f.e. would allow corporations to take the code and profit from it. GPLv3 would ensure that the funding from the EU would go to projects that remains open source and free.
- That's not a good criteria, as it would exclude projects that are essential digital infrastructure like curl. The criteria for public investment needs to be general positive impact.
  
  With hundreds of companies using curl in their software I'd say it's up to them to fund it.
  Unless a strong copyleft license is used you'll soon find some companies lobbying to have their open source MIT licensed code funded, which they then use in proprietary applications and earn money from while no one else uses the MIT code that was paid for. Essentially having the public investment fund a private company.

The EU should agree under the condition that GitHub becomes publicly owned and moves their main operations and servers to Europe.
- and removes telemetry

Public entities funding open source development?
Yes, please!
... in collaboration with GitHub?
Fuck, no!

MS GitHub which feeds its AI with all that's stored there? That GitHub?

GitHub wants open source devs paid? Microsoft's GitHub? Fuck no!
Yes, the EU should fund open source devs. Hell, the world should, and immediately bury all tech companies.
However, I'm very afraid that this, as always, will end up with big tech companies pocketing billions whilst the real guys and gals in the trenches will get pelted with pocket change.
Please for the love of fuck, make sure that the money arrives at the real developers making real open source software. For one, the money should only go to projects that are GPL or comparable

as much as i hate thiel the ycombinator was an ingenious idea and use of capital. nothing in human history has had bigger returns on investment.
we need a morally aligned version of the ycombinator. we need zuckerbergs who won’t abscond open source early on but still have big money backing.
we need to build a better world and we need to use the right tools for the job.

32 comments