[capableweb]

> I’m not sure how this meme got started

How? Look at multitude of projects and see that most people using the software is not contributing back, with either time, money or anything else.

> Why does free software need funding? Free software needs contributions

You're saying the same thing, "contributions" is one way of funding projects, "funding" doesn't just mean money, it also means contributing engineering hours, security audits or any other way of contributing back.

But without any funding (money, time and/or effort), it's really hard to do security audits for example, since it's expertise many developers don't have nor get to educate themselves about on the job.

How is it toxic to see how little everyone who uses open source/free software is contributing back to the projects they use?

[mulmen]

Why do most users need to contribute? The value is the ecosystem. The point is we don’t have to contribute to everything we use. We can build on the work of others and they can build on ours.

Even developers of common libraries are relying on an amount of open code so immense they couldn’t possibly make contributions to all of it. This is the beauty of free software.

[maccard]

> We can build on the work of others and they can build on ours.

This only works if both parties publish. Otherwise it's "we can build on the work of others"

[trashtester]

Many companies seem to be able to benefit in various ways from contributing to open source / free software.

Examples: - Chromium and Android obviously benefits Google as it makes it easier to ensure adds get through - Also, they limit the ability of Apple/Microsoft to control those revenue streams in their walled gardens - Hardware and software vendors benefit from making sure Linux works well with their products - Making TensorFlow free helps build a community that in turn makes hiring easier. - Contributing to Torch may protect against a monopoly - Contributing to other R or Python machine learning tools may help limit the power of companies like SAS or IBM/SPSS - Similarly, contributions to Postgres/Mongo etc wrestles power away from Oracle, MS (MSSQL) and IBM (DB2). - More of the same: Proton vs DirectX, OpenCL vs Cuda, FidelityFX vs DLSS. When a competitor tries to establish a standard that is either paid for or limited or proprietary in some other way, providing or contributing to open alternatives may be easier to do than to provide a direct proprietary competitor. - DataBricks founders benefit from being part of the creation of Spark, and can get paid for adding further value.

Many of the above are cases where large to huge corporations use their power to disrupt competitors by providing free alternatives in areas where the has some market dominance. Other contributions assist in delivering a basic product for free while getting paid for products that add value on top.

[mulmen]

Every individual in the open source community is receiving more benefit than they could ever personally contribute. Keeping score is pointless. The fact is large corporations use open source software and also contribute to the ecosystem, just like anyone else. This is fine.

[zepto]

‘Free’ literally means that you don’t need to contribute back.

If a contribution is required, then it’s not free.