Crazy to think that curl is in nearly every piece of tech sold today[0], and is used in a large amount of the software on those tech products, yet $10k is the biggest donation it's received.
If you compare it to other free things, it does seem odd. For example, kids are making a small living, sometimes a small fortune, playing video games live online with much fewer viewers/users than many open source projects like curl.
I think it's more related to how "normalized" it is. You don't really view wc as solving a problem you had - you view it as something that's always been there. It's worked for decades, and will likely continue to work for decades.
People are only likely to donate to something that's solving a problem they care about.
I suppose open source projects could change their license such that big FAANG companies have to pay for their use, and individuals and small business could still use them for free.
I see no downsides: if my company ever grew to FAANG proportions, I'd be happy to pay a few million dollars (then pocket change) to open source projects I used.
Whatever I've made public, I don't set any expectations for it that would allow me to be let down. It'd be great if it helped me directly in the long run, but I don't expect it to come back.
The author is Daniel Stenberg, the lead developer of curl. A few months ago, I caught an amazing keynote where he walked through some of the crazy things you can do with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Mxq013Dy4
If you use curl, consider contributing via their Open Collective page: https://opencollective.com/curl Even if your employer doesn't have an "open source fund," many companies allow you to expense < $50/month with minimal approval.
Interesting footnote at the asterisk, that the Linux Foundation "didn't bother to respond". I thought of all entities, LF would appreciate something like curl.
The LF hasn't been about tools and software for quite a while. It's disappointing. I wish they'd change the name at this point. At least it would be honest.
> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.
> The LF hasn't been about tools and software for quite a while. It's disappointing. I wish they'd change the name at this point. At least it would be honest.
>> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.
Are there any organizations that use their donations to focus on supporting developers of actual open-source projects?
Diversity is great an all, but it makes more sense to focus on the people who are actually doing the work rather than the ones you hope might do the work.
That's a real shame because other than the note at the bottom, it doesn't really make clear where donations are going. I'd honestly admit that my belief was different to reality, and I'm not entirely certain what "funding diversity programs" means in this context.
I wonder why there aren't more shotgun style donations for these small ulities. Ie say 100k split over 100 most popular ulitities for security bounties etc
That would probably make a tangible impact on overall Internet security
There is no indication in that post, that he was denied entry, simply that he was denied ESTA.
Some countries nationals are allowed travel by ESTA (such as mine, the UK) but certain conditions preclude it, so you apply for a visa, which is what he is in the process of doing during that post.
Not in that post, but there is another post from a year later saying his visa application still hasn't been processed, and even a page to track how long it has been which is approaching the 2 year mark:
They should just update the curl license for all newer versions going forward to require any US based company to pay 1 million dollars to his account per binary distribution of curl.
The "What could possibly go wrong?" list would be quite long, but not being able to travel to the US is probably costing them money.
Thank you, Indeed. It's easy to get bogged down and do nothing but cynically watch assets at the core of your business fail in slow motion, because they're in the commons; so acting anyway is laudable.
Readit News
0: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/09/17/the-worlds-biggest-cu...
>leech
Pick one.
I use wc but I don't donate to GNU/FSF (I'm sure some people do but almost no one I know does).
(just using `wc` as an example -- I'm well aware that `curl`'s utility is much greater. I use curl once in a while.)
People are only likely to donate to something that's solving a problem they care about.
I see no downsides: if my company ever grew to FAANG proportions, I'd be happy to pay a few million dollars (then pocket change) to open source projects I used.
If you use curl, consider contributing via their Open Collective page: https://opencollective.com/curl Even if your employer doesn't have an "open source fund," many companies allow you to expense < $50/month with minimal approval.
> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.
Ref: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate/
>> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.
Are there any organizations that use their donations to focus on supporting developers of actual open-source projects?
Diversity is great an all, but it makes more sense to focus on the people who are actually doing the work rather than the ones you hope might do the work.
I wonder why there aren't more shotgun style donations for these small ulities. Ie say 100k split over 100 most popular ulitities for security bounties etc
That would probably make a tangible impact on overall Internet security
Some countries nationals are allowed travel by ESTA (such as mine, the UK) but certain conditions preclude it, so you apply for a visa, which is what he is in the process of doing during that post.
https://daniel.haxx.se/us-visa.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_of_extraordinary_ability
I bet you could submit a link from his April follow up and get some traction.
The "What could possibly go wrong?" list would be quite long, but not being able to travel to the US is probably costing them money.