Can anyone provide authoritative info on how the various OSS projects
are funded?
Its well and nice to say people contribute for "free" - but most must be
making a living somehow. The number of playboy programmers must be
miniscule.
I believe FSF used to have a page stating all their donors and their
contributions. I think last year their total input was about only about
$550,000 - that would only pay for about 5-10 progs in the US. Even if
these guys are geniuses of the Bill Joy kind I fail to see how such
large numbers of projects are kept running. If I assume that FSF is one
of the best known and most likely to receive funds, then how do the
others survive?
I would guess Apache gets funded by IBM and Sun. They often bundle
Apache code in their products. AOL must underwrite Mozilla, O'Reilly
has close relations with Perl and some other languages.
Certainly projects from grad. students and Universities contribute
heavily. But most major projects are not asscciated w/ Universities.
So the question is "Who pays?" - either in direct funds or by making
available resources such as developers, space, etc.?
A URL to a page of who-pays-whom-for-what would be insightful.
--
Raja Guha
---------
Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd).
-- Teruillian
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