[hellerve]

I’m of two minds about this:

- On the one hand, for GitHub, 500k is nothing, just a PR move. For maintainers, $500 might make the difference between struggling to pay rent and having enough money to leave it in the bank, or having a nice dinner at the end of the month.

- On the other hand, for GitHub, 500k is nothing, just a PR move! If they really wanted to show appreciation for the maintainers that power a billion dollar business, more than a drop in the bucket would be great.

So, I guess it boils down to: that’s a great start, don’t stop there!

[markphip]

A $500K donation to the maintainers of the open source projects used by a company is significant. Full stop. There is no other hand. It is also not the only contributions they make. If all companies made decent sized donations to the open source projects they rely upon the whole ecosystem would be more vibrant and sustainable.

Microsoft also has its FOSS Fund which donates $10K each month to a project that is nominated and voted upon by its FOSS contributors. https://github.com/microsoft/foss-fund

[hellerve]

Fair enough, but should $500k coming from a $10M ARR business be received with the same applause as $500k coming from a >$1B ARR business?

Both are valid opinions, I think, but personally I tend to be more impressed by the smaller business.

At any rate, as I said, it’s a great start.

[markphip]

Is there even one $10M ARR business that has donated $500K even one time? Maybe I am just missing this as these companies do not get the attention of GitHub but I have been involved in open source for 20+ years now and I have little memory of any companies that are donating. The only contributions I tend to see is the companies that have FTE to work on some of the open source projects that matter to that company.

What about all of the banks, oil, retail etc. with enormous ARR? Every company relies on open source. Most do not contribute money or people to the effort. We ought to be celebrating and encouraging more of this.

[hellerve]

> Is there even one $10M ARR business that has donated $500K even one time?

I don’t have exact figures for most of these companies, of course, but I have seen many small consulting or teaching businesses contribute a lot of money to OSS (here’s one such example, I don’t know the company, just a quick look on Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/frontendmasters). That’s because they rely on the success of those software systems to continue making money, of course, but I don’t think that’s any less true for the big payers.

> What about all of the banks, oil, retail etc. with enormous ARR?

I in no way meant to single out GitHub or insinuate that what they were doing was bad, that’s why I tried to end on a high note (to emphasize yet again: _it’s a great start_). What I’m trying to say is that I hope it doesn’t stop there, for GitHub or anyone else. The incentive to do it is higher when there’s good PR coming out of it, and that is mostly true the first time around. I’m hoping that there are more incentives at play than just PR (genuinely, not in a “but I don’t think so” way).

[0des]

Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth.

[jcouball]

I had a friend who always misquoted that as “don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth.” That seems more appropriate for this thread.

[joshmanders]

$500k donated by any business is a lot and should be praised and encourage others. They don't HAVE to do anything, but they are taking the initiative to help out. Can't say the same about other companies.

[jrochkind1]

What is the $10M ARR business that has donated $500K to open source? I will do my best to give them even more applause.

[hellerve]

You might want to check out the sibling thread.

[jrochkind1]

It isn't leading to me any other business donating $500K to open source yet, 10MM ARR or otherwise.

[morelisp]

Is GitHub's 500k "a donation" or "a budget for bizdev/marketing"? How would you tell the difference?

[OJFord]

Yeah as soon as I got to 'who are also signed up with GitHub Sponsors' I thought 'hmm, this came out of the marketing budget didn't it'.

Which is nice for the recipients of course, but otherwise is what it is.

[masukomi]

i would bet good money that GitHub controls a non-profit whose purpose is to give money to open source devs. Otherwise every donation to a sponsor would be a loss because they're passing on 100% of the money†. If, however, they're giving the money to a non-profit then it's all a tax write-off for them.

† yeah, yeah, soon they'll be charging 10% to companies who sponsor, but I'm betting us little folks donating are cumulatively at least a million dollars and they probably don't want to loose hundred thousand when they could have a tax credit for it.

[weird-eye-issue]

That's not how basic accounting and taxes works

You don't pay taxes on revenue, you pay it on profit. If they pay out all the revenue they owe taxes on $0

[jrochkind1]

If $500K is such great PR that it's worth it to the company, I hope we can see a bunch of other companies (and, hey, divisions of Microsoft) do it too!

Presumably people are just as or even more upset at all the other companies who use open source internally but don't give cash like this to large numbers of open source projects? Right? [insert Anakin Padme meme] If all big companies donated $500K a year to open source, that'd be a pretty significant change in the environment, wouldn't it?

I have noticed for a while that HN comments lean really anti-Github. I don't really understand why.

[jcouball]

If this thread is indicative of the PR companies would receive, they won’t contribute in this way.

Just because GitHub might get something out of it does not make it bad.

[heurisko]

> If all big companies donated $500K a year to open source, that'd be a pretty significant change in the environment, wouldn't it?

If those other companies stood to gain as much for $500K spent on marketing, they'd be doing it too.

GitHub isn't somehow more benevolent than all the others. I happen to like GitHub for the product it provides. I just find corporate marketing using maintainers as a proxy is lame. But good for the people who received the money, however.

[drstewart]

>On the other hand, for GitHub, 500k is nothing

No. $0 is nothing. $500k is $500k.

But if you think both are the same, then surely you think they should have just done nothing since it's equivalent?

[hellerve]

Hyperbole is a dangerous rhetorical figure, but I had hoped that I was clear enough so as not to be taken literally but, well, rhetorically.

[targafarian]

Thing is, had GitHub done nothing, there's no discussion at all right now on HN about how little they're doing.

But because they put $500k toward those people whose projects they rely upon, there is now a discussion of what a pittance it is (whether or not you append "good job, hopefully you do more in the future" doesn't change the critical tone you set with all your other words you said before you said that).

The lesson: Almost no act of generosity goes without criticism on social media or discussion sites.

(Note: I hold a pragmatic view of generosity. I don't care what a person or company's motivations are for being generous. PR? Great! Let's show it makes for great PR to be generous! Selfishness, bolstering one's sense of grandeur? Great, feel whatever you want about yourself, as others benefited! Trying to out-compete a rival or friend by giving more than they? Great competition to be in! Did GitHub give to one person? Great! Did they give to 900 people? Great! Did they give each person $10? Great! Did they give each person $550? Great!)

[GuB-42]

Your dilemma is the topic of an article, discussed a few days ago on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720356

Archive link to the article, seems down at the moment.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220618225755/https://blog.jaib...

[amelius]

We need funding of OS projects like how science is funded. Letting a company do it is not a good idea.

Not saying that science funding is perfect.

[hellerve]

I think companies or individuals contributing money to projects they rely on is great, and I personally do it and incentivize OSS development in my own consulting practice (through lower fees and philanthropy).

Now, should it be the main source of income for an OSS project, especially when it’s “critical infrastructure” (let’s just pretend that term is well defined and means whatever it means to each of us)? Probably not, and there should probably be a better way.

Whether science funding in particular is a good model I would debate, since it can be such a beauty pageant at times.

[kylebyproxy]

I always pictured FOSS funding coming from the NEA or perhaps a brand new endowment for technology

[hutzlibu]

Are you involved in how science gets funded?

I am not, but what I know is, it involves lots of buerocracy and still lets lots of science unfunded. But this is understandable, as science is unlimited and the question remains, who decides what is worth funding? And remember that funding is tax payer money.

[noname120]

> just a PR move

This is an uncharitable interpretation of this initiative. What makes you think so?

[hellerve]

It might be a little glib, but that’s the main incentive I see here, especially since they’re exclusively using their own system, Github Sponsors, to direct the money. It makes sense, but if it was truly only about the maintainers, wouldn’t it be better to get the money to them through whatever means they choose to implement?

But you’re right: in the end trying to find out what their actual motives are is purely speculation, and I shouldn’t have phrased it as if it were a fact.

[toastal]

Is this money towards open source? Or only money towards open source that bought into Microsoft GitHub's payment platform?

[dx034]

The question is, how many other companies do that? Would be great if more companies could go through their used libraries and spend $500k. Github doesn't have to make up for all the other users not paying.

[mirthflat83]

So how much have you donated to projects?

[hellerve]

I donate about $2,000/year to projects personally, not counting my time, and work for an OSS company.

Is that enough to be allowed to have an opinion?

[0des]

That depends, how much do you make each year? If that question seems out of line, effectively that's the question you're asking Github.

[hellerve]

I make about €120,000/year.

[0des]

This is the part where I can take a page out of your book and laugh at the paltry sum of your donations in comparison to what you earn..

Or..

I can say "thank you for your supporting open source" and skip all the stuff about acting like a sanctimonious jerk on HN for magic points.

Right now, you're being that guy in a lot of these comments.

[hellerve]

It seems like you are pretty angry at me trying to get the notion across that this is good, but they could do better. That’s okay, I can deal with that.

But I want to make one thing clear: I’m not doing this for HN karma. I haven’t commented on here in years, and this article prompted a reaction. Trying to somehow shoehorn that into "you’re only doing this for points” is invalidating that in a way that I find troubling, because, really, how can I prove you wrong? I might just have an opinion on something and wanted to engage with a community about it, or I might not. Only I can tell (and you, apparently).

EDIT: Correction. I submitted two comments 2 months ago that I forgot about, the comments before that are from 2019.

[iso1631]

They donate $1 in $60

Microsoft revenue is $160B. Have they donated $2.6 billion to open source this year?