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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.
They'll just use the deductions to write off archaic and useless code, like drivers for ports that no longer exist. Do you really need punchcard access?
Well, of course there are two sides to every coin. I expect there's more corp sponsored free software hacking going on than you might think though. Remember that it's not always official - at my last job I submitted patches to various open source projects that I did on the job, because they happened to be basically what we needed and along the way I felt it was necessary to improve them. Often the only indication that they were done on paid time was that I sent them from my company email address.
>if you donate money to a charity and then take it out of your taxes, then effectively, you haven't donated one cent to the charity.
No, that's incorrect. Money donated to charity is subtracted from the taxable income, meaning that the taxable entity only "gets back" the amount of taxes you'd have paid on that marginal income, not the full amount of your donation.
I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source.
Of course if the source was to be ever revealed, that is some serious risk, but if the company plans to keep it always secret - why not?
[environment-friendly post, contains recycled material]
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It's only natural. That's how our free econony works. Nobody wants to pay if she can get the same for zero costs.
Kudos to Bruce Perens for doing The Right Thing. We need to give to the Fortune 500 even more for free (as in gratis). Otherwise they won't use our great libre software. And without them using it, Linux will never go conquering the enterprise desktops.
It is only straightforward then to ban the greedy Qt/KDE developers who don't want to give gratis. These guys now praise the GPL to high heaven (asking Fortune 500 to give back in source code... how ridiculous!)... Alternatively sell'em a 3000.- $US per developer annual license (how naive -- when companies can have the magnificent, cross-platform, stable and supported GTK+ platform for free!).
I am all for UserLinux and hope they do succeed.
There are several levels of freedom. "Free as in beer" being one of them.
As you so blately point out "Don't make it free", well firstly software that is available online isn't automatically free. More than 9 out of 10 times theres a catch or strings attached. Usually in the file called LICENSE or in the top of all the source files.
This is the only thing that separates warez from less than payware.
You can use it on conditions, if you're not smart enough to follow the conditions you should have your brain recalled and your networking-rights revoked. It's a fundamental issue, if you can't stick with the license you are probably breaking the law of your local government and you are a retard!
If somebody offers you X thousand codelines for free and all you have to do to make a profit out of them is to alter Y hundred and publish them. You should do that, and not try to eat your cake and have it, too!
Not everyone who uses open source software knows how to contribute back. I don't; if I did, I would at least try. (I do plan to learn a bit of programming at some point, so I still might, and there are a few bits of open source software that I use often that I'd like to contribute to.)
The chances that a corporation does have someone who can contribute are a lot higher than for an individual. My comments were aimed at them -- though you do have a good point.
i am a soviet space shuttle
If you attach conditions to a gift it is no longer a gift.
I don't know Erik Andersen or whether he is unusually combative, but I see nothing wrong with his Hall of Shame. He's perfectly entitled to try to enforce his copyright, and publicizing violations seems like a reasonable way to go about it. And he isn't by any means alone. The Free Software Foundation enforces the GPL on software to which it holds the copyright.
I believe American corporations could already contribute to open source projects and receive R&D tax credits. The only difference would be the open source project would not be "in house" but if they could show they received something from the "donation" then it should work. Then again, I'm not a tax man. Of course, if the open source project was administered by a non-profit foundation, then a monetary contribution would be a charitable tax donation (Mozilla Foundation?)...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Because you need to keep the cow alive?
Otherwise you are held *hostage* by whoever owns the cow.
Case in point:
Apple
Web browser, Safari, using KHTML code.
Adopted the code into WebKit and WebCore, and in turn provide fixes and patches.
Apple gains a small, lithe, agile, and capable HTML renderer
Apple's contributions guarantee KHTML does not wither and die due to lack of attention as Mozilla gains steam
Secondary effect of creating a third alternative to IE and Mozilla.
Everyone, including Mozilla and IE users, benefit from the diversity and growth.
Capitalism is efficient as long as the costs are taken into effect. If the cost of Open Source is factored in and it is still advantageous, then capitalism will adopt Open Source; we see this in IBM (they too contribute patches to Linux), SGI, Apple, and other, smaller, businesses that gain from the diverse contributors and stable development practices.
GPL Deconstructed
There are no barriers to entry, everyone has access to the information necessary to produce the goods, and new companies can enter the market to drive down the prices if other companies are making abnormal profits.
The only potential failing if barriers are introduced - such as branding due to advertisements etc.
Nonetheless, incetives such as tax cuts do sound like an interesting idea.
...or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?
I agree that simply making a source-code donation (so to speak) into a tax-deductable gift could help encourage even further growth of open-source software. However, I don't see it happening unless the organization running the project were a registered non-profit outfit.
One thing in the original post really bugs me:
Make it mandatory? Are you serious? I wasn't sure if you meant to require a code contribution or a monetary one.
For code, this *might* be possible if your particular license required it, and even that would be pushing it IMO. This would only work with projects that are intended for developers to use; you'd never have anyone using Mozilla if such use required that you contribute code.
If you're talking about monetary contributions, then why bother being open-source in the first place? Essentially, you'd have a commercial product, but with the benefits of a non-profit outfit. It will never happen.
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
If a company hires folks to build upon open source projects, then the costs of writing the code (salaries) are already fully deducted, and as there's no additional material cost for releasing their code, there would be no additional deductions.
IIRC, an individual's labor donated to non-profit causes are not deductible for the individual. And keep in mind that in the US if your individual enterprises don't turn a profit in three years, it's a hobby and expenses are deductible only to the extent of income received.
I disclaim here, I am not an accountant.
Ack! The last thing I need is yet another roadblock to using open source....
And, unlike other reasons people have for not using open source, this one would be a black-and-white, non-optional, IRS-breathing-down-your-neck, gotta-fill-out-forms-in-triplicate requirement. No thanks.
As others have said already, if you like a project, then you can stroke them a check or write some code. Buy books pertaining to the project (help write one if none exist), or buy a packaged copy of the software. Even if you can only send the developer $10, many of them are very appreciative of it (in my experience at least). Who cares if it's tax-deductible or not? You're almost certainly going to be giving less than you'd pay for an equivalent commercial product.
If somebody is violating the license of an open-sourced project, that's an entirely different matter that should be taken to court if necessary. That's the only sort of government involvement I think we need here.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
I make a point of not asking. When they have offered an explanation, it has usually been along the lines of "we thought we were in compliance, since you can get busybox from the busybox website", or "the company we bought the software from in Taiwan didn't tell us", and similar things.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
Absolutely not. As soon as you get government involved, OS becomes political, and influenced by political forces. This is the last thing we want.
I shall ignore your startling display of political naivety and ignorance, and draw attention instead to your curious suggestion that OSS is not political. Damn, there I was thinking we were striking a blow against exploitative capitalism, making a statement that not all value is monetary, and providing better software than the megacorporations can produce for free.
Have you read the GNU manifesto? If that ain't political I'd like to know what is.
Keep in mind that open source software can be audited and modified by anybody
We could certainly see a list of 'approved' projects for government support...
Yes - Encryption the NSA can read
No - Encryption that keeps stuff secret
Yes - Software in english
No - Software in nasty foreign languages
-etc.
At the end of the commercial they say "His name . . . is LINUX". It was a weird commercial, but when a heavy hitter like IBM gets behind something the guys in the suits will start to listen. I predict that within 5 years, Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop and Office suite will be all but over.
Ive worked on busybox with Erik for over 3 years, your the first person ive heard criticise him like that. Your opinion of him certainly isnt common.
As someone who has done a lot of work on busybox, im glad Erik set up the "Hall of Shame", and does his best to defend the project.
Do you know what "Tall Poppy Syndrome" is ?
How ironic it is then that your response is being carried on the Internet, an extension of a network which began as a government program.
If people took your attitude around the Great Depression, people wouldn't have the large government programs that pulled them out of poverty and helped restore some degree of trust in the US government. These programs were looked upon with scorn in the 1980's when the rich were doing so well and they didn't have much of an alternative press to deal with. But today we can see the international problems caused by widescale deregulation and so-called "free-trade" agreements that encourage what many call 'a race to the bottom'.
Now that the US economy is circling the drain again, people will probably look again at big government programs to help them compete with low wage jobs overseas. Someday people will realize what's in store when you leave your economy to corporations that chase the lowest paid worker on Earth but want all the tax breaks the US is willing to give.
While obviously not everything governments do is worthwhile or reasonable, some things governments do are. And in a government where you have the opportunity to participate, as you do in the US by talking with your representatives, participating in the media, and voting, you share the task of making it better.
Digital Citizen
Guess you don't want the NSA or the government to be using or contributing to Linux, then. But they do.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Making free software tax deductible will be implicitly admitting that software has value. And if it has value, it can be taxed. This means that anyone receiving said software will essentially be receiving a gift which, according to US tax laws, is taxable. Do you really want to be taxed for all the software you use?
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The RPL was designed in response to a feature of the GPL that allows a company to modify Open Source products and not disclose that changed product unless they distribute outside their organization. The resulting license is considerably more viral than the GPL-which means that many corporate users would want to buy the software under a commercial license.
That's OK there are many things that can be usefully done even if you're not a programmer.
For example I have a project which has happily had a few people contribute to - but I know there are areas I cannot manage myself.
Contribute a logo?, or contribute some documentation? These are equally valid ways of given some time to help the project.
Of course I like toys/rewards but even minor things like a good bugreport will make my day.
I think a lot of projects are very similar to mine, a large userbase but a very small core of people who will tell you what they want and give you a small patch every now and again.
It's not often that a project gets large enough to actually get lots of people working on it, and I'm glad that mine isn't like that to be honest. Sure I'd like to think that at some point I can hand it away to others and it will continue to exist - but as long as I've had fun along the way and learnt interesting things that's enough for me.
The next time you find some free software and have trouble installing it why don't you write up your experiences and post it to a newsgroup/mailing list. Google will happily index it and chances are six months later somebody you've never met on the other side of the world will be very grateful you took the time to contribute documentation. It's a funny world like that!
...and this post is all me. Having worked on projects using many products made by my company, bugs have often been found. These changes go through quickly as we all work for the same boss. This is not to say that other customers do not get fixes made to products they use. A popular server or two we sell has acquired many features and fixes directly as a result of requests by external customers.
Blar.
Banking on a liscense unproven in court seems kinda silly. I mean, any company could take OSS, change the source enough to make it theirs and nobody would be able to prove they stole it.
Blar.