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Comment by svjatoslav | Hacker News Reader

I asked Richard Stallman this question: His answer was: Live cheaply.

Eric S. Raymond answer was: Be independently wealthy.

I have tried to reach billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Dean Kamen, Warren Buffet, and others) with the idea that there are very talented people around who have brilliant ideas (say for instance another Newton or Mozart) but are not financially independent to afford to work on those. Among good places to look for such talent is to identify and support important or promising open source projects and people behind them. But none of them bothered to respond.

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I was at a lunch years ago where some former Microsoft executive was present. Really wealthy guy and now doing some sort of policy advocacy or something. This was around the time of the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL and he was talking about the need to improve software security by creating some committees or something[0]. I suggested to him that since OpenSSL was already widely used and operating with very few employees on a tiny budget it would be a better investment of time and money to just give OpenSSL a couple million dollars to audit their code and clean it up. He was sort-of flustered by this suggestion and talked about how that doesn't solve the problem because there is just so much software that is insecure. Now, obviously that is true, but I don't see how his proposal to solve the problem by having meetings was any better.

I think really wealthy people have two problems when it comes to this: (1) there are a lot of people out there who want money but can't deliver. (2) many of these wealthy people, like the guy I mentioned above, want to be actively involved in solving problems. He didn't want to give money to OpenSSL because his only role there would be giving them money. Instead, he wanted to create some organization with his name on it so that he could be seen to be doing something.

[0]: I don't remember exactly what his proposal was, but I remember thinking it sounded really bureaucratic and unlikely to have any real benefits in practice.

Exactly. That tax-deductible donation needs to go to their own foundation, so they can spend the money in a way of their choosing and also gain prestige for banquet hob-nobbing.

It's not that they don't want to do good - it's that they want to maximize the value from the good they do.

Are you surprised they didn't respond?

Your solution to this problem seems to be focused on what other people can do to make things easier for you and others like you, but that's not how humanity works.

You're ignoring that your request is unreasonable because you're taking the easy way out - looking for a source of money and convincing yourself that your efforts deserve it because it's easier than doing the work yourself.

Stallman is right. Live cheaply. If you prefer, work full time at a well paid job and use your own money to support open source development. The rich aren't obligated to hand you money because you believe you're doing the right thing.

He contacted wealthy philanthropists, who regularly give money to worthy causes. It’s not an unreasonable thing to do.

These people receive 100s of requests like this. Perhaps they're focusing on funding something else.

Also, I don't understand why people seem to expect a reply to a (probably) cold email.

You are using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man argument. It is not about other people being obligated to pay me personally. The point is more general: there is lots of wasted talent. For example: Nicola Tesla did not had own money to support work that later changed the world. Instead he was stuck wasting his time digging trenches and working for Edisson for pennies. It was pure luck that he met George Westinghouse and with his support was able to realize some of his ideas. The point is that too often generally useful work that few gifted people can do does not result in timely or proper compensation to the author. Having dedicated effort for identifying such people and projects and supporting them would be very good use of philanthropic money. And Open Source projects is very good place to look.

> The rich aren't obligated to hand you money

> use your own money to support open s...

Why should he feel obligated to support others?

He seems to think other people should support him doing open source work, is this not the same thing?

He isn't. However if he wants to support himself doing open source that is the requirements. Everyone must consider their own values. Starving artist is a meme because many artists live on almost nothing to do art.

you cut out the "if you prefer, [...] use your own money".

Just a guess, probably because he likes their work?

There is the MacArthur Foundation with its "Genius Award." Richard Stallman was one of the Fellows in its 1990 class. If I recall correctly, the award was for $100K a year for 5 years, no strings attached.

https://www.macfound.org/fellows/412/

one winner per year.... yeah, that's not a lot.

It looks like there were 36 Fellows in 1990:

https://www.macfound.org/fellows/search/?fellow_class=33

Sad and similar response from both of them, ie "you shouldnt need money"

This is a major failure of free and open source, not having a business plan at all while those who do have a business plan, Google, AWS, Microsoft are reeking in the billions in profit from the free labor provided by foss-developers.

Why cant developers of the software (say coreutils) make profits on it? Why cant developers put constraints on the softwares usage, ie you arent allowed to use it unless you pay. Pay to buy software freedoms model.

Meanwhile, Microsoft/Google is using the same software to make a profit and it says to its customers "pay monthly to be allowed to use this foss". Thats all fine. Strange.

"This is a major failure of free and open source"

I agree. So many developers would simply like to sell their open source product so customers can run the product themsleves. It's simply impossible.

It's ironic that so many SaaS businesses are built on open source - a model that gives users even less control.

My recommendation is for developers to consider the 'source-only' option: you charge customers for your product and provide the source code. The code is not open source, but it still gives your customer flexibility to adapt the product to fit their needs.

There are successful examples of independent developers making a full-time living using this model, some even publish their source code on GitHub but rely on the honesty of their customers to not redistribute the code (examples include Kirby CMS and Craft CMS).

By the way, the GNU Project (supported by the Free Software Foundation) has never updated their advice on selling open source software to reflect reality. They still advise developers to charge for support or documentation (deeply unpopular with developers and customers). Or charging for distribution of software. This might have made sense in an era of software CDs and dial-up internet but make no sense in a era of broadband and GitHub:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

But this is something open source developers choose, no? They can revise the licenses to ask for licensing fee for companies larger than 1000 employees and let rest of the people use it for free.

If I ever develop an open source software, I’ll definitely ask for tiered licensing cost, something like redisdesktop.com.

> Live cheaply

> Be indepenedently wealthy

Both are very good suggestions. And I don't think there are better ones around.

I suspect that the likes of Steve Wozniak and Dean Kamen probably already do some kind of financing albeit not too openly.

Identifying a Newton or Mozart is a bigger problem that financing them, I think.

It would be interesting to see what people like Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and have been offered by the rich to continue their work. They are worth billions but I suspect they only see a fraction of that sum.

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