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Apple's Spotty Record of Giving Back To the Tech Industry
chicksdaddy (814965) writes "Given Apple's status as the world's most valuable company and its enormous cash hoard, the refusal to offer even meager support to open source and industry groups is puzzling. From the article: 'Apple bundles software from the Apache Software Foundation with its OS X operating system, but does not financially support the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in any way. That is in contrast to Google and Microsoft, Apple's two chief competitors, which are both Platinum sponsors of ASF — signifying a contribution of $100,000 annually to the Foundation. Sponsorships range as low as $5,000 a year (Bronze), said Sally Khudairi, ASF's Director of Marketing and Public Relations. The ASF is vendor-neutral and all code contributions to the Foundation are done on an individual basis. Apple employees are frequent, individual contributors to Apache. However, their employer is not, Khudairi noted. The company has been a sponsor of ApacheCon, a for-profit conference that runs separately from the Foundation — but not in the last 10 years. "We were told they didn't have the budget," she said of efforts to get Apple's support for ApacheCon in 2004, a year in which the company reported net income of $276 million on revenue of $8.28 billion.'"
Does this article exist for any purpose other than fanning the flame?
Yes, Apple should probably throw some cash at the Apache foundation, but that's not why this was posted to Slashdot.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why would I contribute to open source, when Apple - and Google - use it to build walled gardens and make millions - billions - of dollars I'll never see a penny of? The exploitation of open source by companies that use it to build products that are the opposite of the open source philosophy - I mean walled gardens - is getting hard to take. You can say that they're free to do whatever they want with open source as long as they comply with the licenses, but that's not my point. What could possibly motivate me to donate my time and skills to making Apple and Google more money? The walled garden is going to destroy open source. The funny thing is no one seems to care. People are abandoning GNU's forced openness and going to licenses that basically let big companies exploit the software any way they want to. I guess the days of principled opposition to what Apple and Google are doing are over.
It's my understanding he wasn't big on giving money away.
Your understanding is incorrect.
He didn't like telling everyone about his donations.
He didn't like doing it to show off or for politics, he preferred to donate to the actual cause, not so other people would think he was a good person.
He didn't donate so you liked him, he donated to accomplish things.
But still, somehow, you know and it makes him even better in your eyes. Interesting that.
Innovation is always built on the back of others. Nothing pops out of the blue. It is only the lack of education that makes on believes otherwise. The entire affordable microcomputer industry is based on Compaq's reverse engineering(stealing) of the IBM OS. The free browser for everyone is due to MS conning a profitable firm, then giving away the browser and forcing that firm into bankruptcy. Innovation has never been about pulling a product out of you ass. A knife was not suddenly one day made. We had to figure out how to mine the melt, smelt it, and then how to make it a knife that is not brittle.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Microsoft ONLY does it to gain control, the fact that you mention them hurts your point more than helps it.
Does Microsoft really control Apache now? Why wasn't this news splashed all over the news sites?
If I have it wrong, and it is not Apache that the company bought, which open source project did it take control of?
and they've done their best at tax avoidance depriving each country where they trade of valuable tax revenue
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Really, did you miss the whole goto fail thing, where everyone was looking at the source? Of course, the number of ACs back then crowing "stupid Apple should have stuck with OpenSSL, which is thoroughly vetted by thousands of eyes!" gives me the feeling that ACs will have a very selective memory about the whole thing now.
And just why do you find that interesting? If making himself look better was Jobs's game plan, he would have been public with the donations. What I will find interesting is how much of a dent this makes in the Jobs-never-gave-money-to-charity talking point. Sort of like how you could dig up the Apple -> XEROX stock receipts and it wouldn't make a dent in the "Apple stole from PARC" talking point.