this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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There needs to be a method for compelling corporations that benefit from open-source projects to contribute both code and money to the project.
usually this is done through software licenses, but almost every time this happens:
Most of the B2B clients drop your product to immediately. When Json.NET (or some other ubiquitous C# library that eludes me) change this license agreement for business users, we expunged that fucker within a fortnight.
A bunch of B2B just don't bother paying, out of malicious intent or negligence. Maintainers of the project in question don't have the means (let alone time) to chase up royalties when half the time the response is my previous bullet.
A few B2B cough up the license fee.
A minority, but the one that fucks you over the most, plough a bunch of money and engineers onto a fork from before the license change. Not only do they get a bunch of your users for free, especially as their solution will be a drop in replacement to yours, but they usually end up making a fuckload more money from your work in the process!
There are only two solutions. Government grants, or restricting Freedom 0 (The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose) and embracing a non-commercial model publication model. The latter model is undesirable because it turns everything into a subsidiary of Oracle.
These Silicon Valley companies are obscenely valuable. They should be taxed steeply.
You're absolutely right on this. Government regulation is the only way you can get anyone to do anything.
Reminds me of an old coworker who couldn't understand why an open source project wouldn't care about his request when we had support contract with the company that consumed the project.
we pay for support why won't they code in my request
(note request was then wanting to do something that was supported already but not in the way they wanted it implemented)
Or honestly better comparison is Microsoft and ffmpeg
https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/1775178803129602500
I think it would have to be a formal regulatory body, complete with audits and dependency graphs. I wonder how you would set prices for that without letting people game the market
The
is-numberauthor in the JS ecosystem will be the wealthiest software person on the planet overnight.Probably not the worst case scenario tbh
Maybe the FSF could find itself with a sense of purpose for the first time in a few decades and just start mailing invoices lol