Le 09/01/2013 05:37, Rudolf a écrit : > This is a call to encourage everyone to email any software development > company to ask them how much they're contributing back to free/open source > software. > > A lot of companies are freeloading off of free/open source software and > hardly contribute or hardly mention that they're using the software at all. > It's time to get them to be proud of using free software and encourage them > to contribute more and to donate more. > > I can understand not being 100% committed to promoting the cause but when > you're using 99% free/open source software to create proprietary software > and hardly mentioning what you've used to create it, you should be ashamed. > Using the hard work of others while never donating and never mentioning > them (aside from job/career ads) is something that we need to call out. > > All it takes is one blog post, one tweet, one Facebook post, one StatusNet > message to say "hey, we love using free/open source software, and this is > why it's awesome". All it takes is to make a few commits to the free/open > source software that you use daily. All it takes is a small donation to a > favourite free/open source software project. But many many companies don't > do any of that. > > Here's what we should do: > > 1. find companies which are using free/open source software and do not > provide an obvious mention that they use or produce free/open source > software (job ads aren't obvious; blog posts, twitter, facebook, identi.ca, > etc. are obvious) > > 2. email their contact email address with the following message: > > > Hi, > I would like to know what sorts of free/open source software > contributions are being made by [COMPANY] and if it is possible to view > them on the internet? I know some other companies have github, bitbucket or > gitorious accounts and regularly make contributions to the software that > they use (such as [SOFTWARE1] or [SOFTWARE2] ) > > > where SOFTWARE1 and SOFTWARE2 are examples of software that the company > uses. If they're using MySQL and Ruby on Rails, then SOFTWARE1 is MySQL and > SOFTWARE2 is Ruby on Rails. > > 3. post the responses to the mailing list or on your own blog or paste > it somewhere on the internet. Let's see what these companies have to say > for themselves. > > The contact email address may be a support line and it may not go > through to an actual programmer but it might get kicked around. A > non-response or a negative response is still a response! Post it somewhere > and let's get some kind of conversation happening. > > The first step is getting a conversation started. The next step is getting > them to name the software used in an obvious location (blog, twitter, > facebook, identi.ca, reddit) and to donate to a project (doesn't matter if > it's a $25 donation to a small C++ library or $1000 to the FSF. > > I'm willing to setup a website that lists companies and email conversations > concerning this. I'll even be willing to list the companies that have > mentioned free software or have donated to a free software project. > > Any thoughts on this? > Rudolf Olah >
Good idea, indeed the adoption of free software does not exempt compensation of author(s)... I believe that some companies that use free software as a medium in their business are not aware that behind the freedom of use of modification and redistribution is also the sense of profit-sharing... - --- --- --- Librement. Mimmo D.DN
