[wrigby]

I've found that the engineers who build products on open source software very rarely have the authority to donate company money, and the businesspeople that do have the authority rarely understand the benefits of it.

I think a guide on how to get your company involved in donating to OSS projects would be beneficial. Has anyone come across any good advice, or have any experience in influencing your employer to donate?

[wiz21c]

Funding an open source project you use means funding the competitors.

A is a company, B is an individual with lots of spare time.

B feels that he can help the company by writing a tool for them. He also envisions that the tool could be used by other companies and so wants to open source it so he can provide services around the tool.

B says to A : see, I'm going to develop the tool for you for free, in exchange you test it.

Note the tool is the n-th implementation of common business practices, such as an ERP. The tool is not about something specific to A.

B thinks : I'm independent, I'm not hired by A, I write the code as free software as it pleases me.

A then says : wtf? you're going to publish that code on the web ? Therefore my competitor might get it so, no way. I'd be liable for giving away some value of the company to the competitor

So, instead of saying something like "hey, I use that program so let's fund it a little", A actually says "by helping B to develop the program, I may actually help my competitors, I'm in legal trouble".

B is somewhat screwed :-(

(I let you figure out if this actually happened to me :-))

[Svenskunganka]

I don't think that this applies to this very case though. Django was not made for Instagram, it was made available to the general public for free, as an open source framework. Instagram engineers only decided to use what was on the table.

I also believe that Instagram needs Django to be OSS, and the same goes for any other framework/language/library that other companies use, as OSS in itself is an extremely powerful label for a project. It brings together developers to form a community with lots of great minds and inputs. It helps feasible projects become production-ready and stable much faster than if it was closed source as its use-cases are far more wider than what a single company would provide.

Taking this from a competetive standpoint isn't very realistic in my opinion. I dare say that if either Django or Python weren't open source software, Instagram wouldn't be built on it in the first place.

I think it's absurd how Instagram can grow financially fat from the hard work of the Django Software Foundation without even contributing a dime to their fundraising or provide engineers exclusively to the DSF. IMHO Instagram should bring that fundraising up to at least 100%, considering Instagram revenue is estimated to hit $5.8 billion USD by 2020, $160,000 USD per year is a small price for the amount of value Django brings them.

It's a topic of morale though, Instagram does not owe the DSF anything, but I guess this shows where Instagrams appreciation lies.

[wiz21c]

You're right

>>> It's a topic of morale though, Instagram does not owe the DSF anything, but I guess this shows where Instagrams appreciation lies.

That's the point I was actually making. My experience that when you have people brainwashed with "competitive advantage", "profit maximization", and such, well, morale just doesn't exist anymore. In my case, I was surprised to see how quickly someone I trusted can actually switch to this brainwashed brain...

[kqr]

I think an easier strategy might be to work into your contract that if you happen to fix FOSS software on company time (to fix things your client notices), your patches go back upstream.

This, at least, is the implicit policy at the company I work for. It's used in the pitch ("we use and contribute to open source software, which we believe leads to a better internet" and so on) to the clients who appreciate such things.

That said, there might be too much legal tape to get that into a contract.

[cageface]

I tried to organize some OSS donations at the last big company I worked for. Everybody approved of the idea in theory but the red tape involved in making it happened killed it.

I think the problem in many cases is that the finance and legal people at companies big enough to make a sizable donation are so busy that stuff like this never makes it to the front of their priority queue.

[ChristianBundy]

No, but I'd love to contribute to something like this.