The World Runs 20B Instances of Curl. Where's the Support?
The World Runs 20B Instances of Curl. Where's the Support?
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The World Runs 20 Billion Instances of Curl. Where's the Support?
6 comments
6 comments
The World Runs 20B Instances of Curl. Where's the Support?
The World Runs 20 Billion Instances of Curl. Where's the Support?
$5 for
curl. Per month.Want to
ls? That’s $20Honestly, if people and companies could just pay $5-10/user/month to support their entire OSS ecosystem, many would. It's far from that simple though. There is no central fund. If you are lucky, you have a favourite project or two with a registered charity in your jurisdiction, or a BuyMeACoffee, etc. That requires individuals to think and plan, and won't have companies contributing in the same way.
Similar could be said for news - I'd happily pay $10/month for the news I read .. but I am not going to sign up to 30 separate subscriptions just to read 1-2 articles per site each month. Microtransactions would be ideal for news, but the industry is obsessed with subscriber-lock-in. So instead I pay nothing, block ads, and use archive.ph and similar.
I could imagine central donation platforms, which OSS projects can sign up to, allowing individuals to influence where their contributions go. It would be a nightmare to administer globally - so it might have to be regional / jurisdictional initiatives. Allow companies to contribute more and choose centrally, or purchase subscriptions for employees and let them choose. Projects could set goals and redistribute donations over that amount. This could be a good EU funded project, actually.
Who decides which app gets what money? The whole point of open source is that it’s free. People who want money are just realizing open source is a pain sometimes.