Industry-Based ToDo Alliance Wants To Guide FOSS Development

jralls (537436) writes The New York Times broke a story [Monday] (paywalled if you look at more than 10 stories a month) about ToDo, "an open group of companies who run open source programs" who are seeking to "committed to working together in order to overcome" the challenges of using FOSS, "including ensuring high-quality and frequent releases, engaging with developer communities, and using and contributing back to other projects effectively." The more militant among us will read that as "It's not enough getting a free ride off of developers building great software, we want to shove our roadmap down their throats and get them to work harder for us — without having to pay for it, of course." That might be a bit harsh, but none of the companies on the page are exactly well known for cooperating with the projects they use, with Google being one of the worst offenders by forking both Linux and WebKit.

Comments

companies pay workers to develop software

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point.

I've contributed to open source projects (mostly Drupal, in my case) for years. Virtually all of it has been while I was paid as an employee, contributing back things I developed for my employer (and with my employer's consent and encouragement). I don't send the bulk of my time working on projects just for the community. Most of my time is creating solutions for my employer's clients. But in the course of this, it is not uncommon that I create something useful to others, and then contribute it back.

Open source developers are a diverse group and I know my situation is radically different from many other people's. But it is easy to generalize, and good to keep in mind that developers and companies come at open source from different perspectives.