Do Companies Take Software, And Not Give?

SirDaShadow writes "The Inquirer has an excellent article that describes how companies take from the Open Source Community and how few are giving back. At the end of the article, it says it might be tax deductible. This made me think...wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS, or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?" This piece ignores the obvious and large contributions that some companies have made in money, programmer time, code release and even just lending their name and credibility to projects like KDE and GNOME, but it does have some truth -- see for instance the Busybox Hall of Shame.

Comments

Gee. thanks a lot

[TheAncientHacker]

I know I want to spend my tax dollars subsidizing Red Hat's executives and sales droids. (Or did you really think that the tax breaks don't get subsidised by the taxes the rest of us pay...)

Sheesh. Must be a Bush Republican to have that little understanding of finance.

I would NOT give anything to OS

[SpecialAgentXXX]

At work, we use almost all OS to keep our costs down and increase profits. It's called CAPITALISM. Why in the hell would we want to just freely give something away to the "community"? That's COMMUNISM.

Before you say I'm trolling, we do buy the support contracts for the OS so we can get tech support when needed. That is our only "contribution" to OS. Also, with all of the layoffs and increased workload, why would a company want to throw away precious few resources on a "free" project? We're not a charity, we're a business and need to make money to put food on the table and roofs over our heads.

Re:go with the flow

[Doc Ruby]

Yapping Anonymous Coward, you must be a marketdroid. In fact, when I *was* a management consultant, I (serendipitously) coined the term "interactivate", a appropriately qualitative (not hype quantitative) neologism. If you don't understand it, you'll never afford my explanation. Shut up, or I'll have to k^Hbill you.

Re:go with the flow

[Doc Ruby]

Asshole Anonymous Coward, I just whipped your absent "intellect" into gibbering vapor yesterday. Since your body is apparently running around smacking keys without even a rudimentary brain, you can grope for the head at this thread. Your family must be very proud.

Re:go with the flow

[Doc Ruby]

Funny, Anonymous, pathetic Coward, you seem like the same clown I spanked in that other thread. Of course, you're too stupid to realize that one of the disadvantages of Cowardly Anonymous posting is hiding among an indistinguishable mass of imbeciles. Fascinating as your playtime pissgames might be to you, revealing them here just removes any distinction that might have existed across the trouser boundary. I'm proud of how I continue to drive off imbeciles like you, with but a few simple words.