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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.
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Not true at all. The government only pays for a percentage of the cost - which would be approximately the marginal tax rate of the entity donating the code.
For example, if I donate $1 to a charity, and my marginal tax rate is 50%, I wind up paying $0.50 less in taxes than I would have without the tax deduction. I'm still out $0.50 from my own pocket.
IANAA (accountant), so YMMV.
What taxes do you think that companies pay? In the US, individual citizens pay the majority of taxes. Corporations have successfully moved their headquarters offshore, or "convinced" Congress to provide loopholes. Corporations don't pay their share of taxes; they don't need any more deductions.
Best of all, that charity has $1 it may not have gotten from the corporation (who still loses money through donating and still does it!), and it CERTAINLY wouldn't have gotten a single penny from the government.
Heh. Nice troll... You forgot to mention that I have snakes for hair and I eat babies for breakfast... :-)
I have spent thousands of dollars of my own money, and zillions of hours developing busybox and uClibc and paying for hosting to make them available to the world. I really don't care if you happen to like me or not -- that is your business. I also don't care if you happen to like opensource stuff or not. Also your business. For the record, I did not post this to slashdot. I tried having my lawyer send letters to companies violating the busybox license. A good way to accomplish nothing -- it was just not working. Then I came up wit the idea of the Hall of Shame, and I have found it to be a far more effective tool for getting compliance. Most companies claim they didn't realize they were not in compliance, and are taking steps to fix the problems. Which I think is much better than getting lawyers involved, especially since I'm not very interested in suing people.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
It is not intended to be "shocking". It is intended to try and get at least a bit more license compliance. Having my lawyer send letters is a great way to get nothing done. The Hall of Shame has been far more effective at getting companies to talk to me about making the needed changes. To the extent it is working, I am glad it is there.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
You don't need to be a programmer to contribute to OSS. You can:
* Send $, pizza vouchers, Safari sub. etc to the developer of your choice.
* Send $ to Debian or FSF (may even be tax deductable)
* Donate hardware (something YOU really want supported) to a developer working in that area.
* Test software and send back well documented bug reports.
* Write documentation for your favorite app/utility
* Write a Howto or mini-howto on something that has given you trouble.
* Help others in your favorite mail list/newsgroup/forum.
I think there are similar organizations dedicated to KDE, Apache, Mozilla, and many other large projects. For that matter, a serious e-mail to a dev list offering money can probably get a 501-c3 set up.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
I don't think that's entirely accurate. It's given away freely without expectation of compensation, but not without expectation of the receiver doing the same. The issue is not that company X has got something for nothing, but rather that they are giving nothing in return.
I'm stoked when a user uses and like my software and equally so when they pass it along to mates, but if I caught a user blatently selling my code and not passing it on (in direct violation of the license) they'll get a C&D letter, followed by legal action. Being a company doesn't change that in any way.
Even a company without IT staff usually has a lawyer or two available, and presumably their lawyers are saying you don't need to adhear to the GPL. If lawyers are giving that advice, then we better get this into court and clearly prove otherwise - before it gets out of hand.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Hiring a code maintainer is exatly what a company does not want to do.
Every company should have someone who is responsible for tracking what software is used, who is using it, and what releases are used. They should check at least monthly to see if there are any updates, what the updates do, and whether the updates are critical or desirable for the company. This person is usually an administrator with no programming skills. This applies whether the software is all proprietary, all OSS, or mized. It is REQUIRED if proprietary software is involved to track the per-person and per-server and per-CPU licenses.
Maintainers are very expensive, and you can't hire them in pieces.
I cannot be the only consultant who works hourly. Companies hire me when they need me. I go away when my task is done. They know I am available if they need more assistance. Does that fit your definition of "hiring in pieces?
The closest you can come to this is to hiring a company which specializes in maintaining the package you wanted.
Does it matter if it is a company or an individual? 1099s are 1099s regardless of how many people do the work. Hiring a company does mean you can have a better SLA than an individual can deliver. I had 4 companies want me in their offices for the same day in May; I was able to keep them all happy, but that is because my relationships are based on my controlling the schedule while making them happy, and they all know and accept that. I am hired through consulting companies, so the customers could ask for someone else from the consulting companies if there was anyone else who could handle the tasks.
Why do they need to specialize in THIS package? I am often shown the systems where some critical application is running and asked to fix something. I have to figure out where the files are, what language they are in, where the issue is, write the fix, and attempt to test it without destroying the live system. (The last time this happened, they pointed me to the wrong server!) A good programmer can work on anything. If you know the programming language, then you can narrow your search to people/companies that specialize in the language, but why limit yourself to somebody that knows THIS product? Maybe it was on the resume because they did some little fix for another customer. Check the list of active contributors to the package and see if one of them is willing to accept money from you in return for guaranteeing that your needs are filled. If not, then either find someone willing to become a (paid) contributor, or just find someone who is really good at programming.
In that case, you've lost the price advantage you had, and you've not gained the source.
It does not stop being OSS just because you hire someone else to look at it. I believe support for most OSS is equal or less expensive than equivalent support for proprietary software. It may have something to do with people being able to read the code. Or it might be that people who work with OSS tend to like software much more than people who just do it as a job.
You don't have people on site who can actually read the source,
Depends on your contract. Did you ask for someone onsite 24x7? Do you really need that? If you are hiring a company for support, then get a 4-hour SLA for critical issues. If the system is mission-critical, it should have enough redundancy that there is never a critical issue.
and if your service provider goes under, you're left without an escape.
Do you understand OSS? If your service provider goes under, you choose another service provider.
What's the advantage of this over buying from Microsoft?
When Microsoft goes under, there will be no updates. No bug fixes. No security fixes. With OSS, there is always somebody who can fix it. Your worst case is that you hire the best programmer you can find and give him much money to work on the software. But your company does not fall apart because you cannot fix/patch your productivity apps and web servers and every other piece of software you depend on.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.