Open source maintainers underpaid, swamped by security, and going gray

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Open source maintainers underpaid and going gray.
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Companies that make at least $1M a year should donate to OSS they are using in their software.

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I’m (unfortunately) against such ideas. Forcing people would never give you anything good. The art of business is to give and take and not only take. Fine, in this case they only take (use open source projects), but they are allowed to do so. It’s like giving someone a free cake and then asking to pay for it. It’s unfair and anti-market practice. :-1:

Owners of companies are tired of regulations, taxes and other expectations - look that they are paying a good money for accounting, because they want to just focus on the business part. I understand that BigTech is problem here, but law is or at least should be equal to everyone. :heavy_equals_sign:

Your idea have lots of holes. For one project using open source dependencies may be less than 1% of value and in other it may do most of work. Having same expectations on both types is extremely unfair. Finally what stops said company from creating an open source crap and donate itself? :moneybag:

Look that most taxes governments does not have from BigTech, but from a workers. Firstly I would focus on this problem and then think about other things. :thinking:

I understand what you want to say, I really am, but this is bad solution for a serious problem. It would cause more problem than it solve and only would end up with hate from each side instead of doing a real and good business. :brain:

After last 5 years I’m also tired about all of that. If it would be legal I would even use 100% of taxes on open source projects, but no matter if I would have 0.5 of million or 50 million I don’t want to hear about more paper work or more money expectations and it’s completely not related to open source - just speaking generally. :see_no_evil:

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Good argument. So what could be an alternative?

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First of all I would make sure that my country does not have debts and the budget is stable. Unfortunately in this crazy word every amazing idea would still be idea when law entities have huge debts and can’t do much.

If some country would have a budget then it should invest some part into open source. That’s good for few reasons:

  1. If I would have a company in one country why I’m forced to pay for open source in other country? This argument would no longer have any strength.

  2. Assuming no change in taxes it would not cause inflation as long as money are well spend.

  3. Each country should be interested in any kind of private or public research within it’s country. Please keep in mind that even if we make something public there is huge delay between it and introducing a new software in other countries. Since it’s done at the country level each country would still have a “first access” to said tech and still contribute to open source.

In this case we would not have any conflicts of interests and can make a really good money. Of course a big companies are often avoiding taxes. Unfortunately it’s intended as if we would have a good leaders it would not happen. They find a holes in law mainly because it’s overcomplicated for smaller players. So a good taxation system and country budget would in fact make big players invest in open source projects.

Of course that would not happen. We live in world we live, but we should go on the way to make it real as otherwise we would jump from one edge to another one and this is never a good way.