This is what the Linux Foundation does now - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2025, 01:51:01 am
content: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/supporters-of-chromium-based-browsers

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2025, 08:21:16 am
content: When a human organization reaches a sufficient size, it will inevitably shift its focus towards ensuring its own survival.In animals, apoptosis balances this out (failure leading to tumours), but us humans aren't intelligent enough –– or rather, cannot think long term enough, not any more at least –– to apply that to the organizations we ourselves are part of.(Which is why Ron Swanson of the Parks and Recreation comedy series reallyissuperhuman.)It is also partially why investors tend to increase their estimates of a company when it shrugs off excess workforce.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2025, 02:23:13 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 11, 2025, 01:51:01 amTo be fair, in between datamining its users Google has retained a lot of commitment to open source development. There is nothing inherently wrong with Chromium except the source of the money funding it and what can happen if Google just decides to stop contributing.On the other hand, Firefox has been funded by the same money ... and running into the problem of what to do when Google decides to stop contributing. They should have gotten an engineer CEO with a 10x lower salary, put most of the Google money into a trust fund, then they could have funded the Firefox developers forever.Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 11, 2025, 08:21:16 amThat happens to companies and departments, but that's not really what happens to non profits. Most large non profits become enrichment schemes for friends of the board. They spend money like water, because the more money flows the more money can be diverted to friends with plausible deniability. Only a few avoid that fate. Either because leadership refreshes very often, it's intensely democratic, or it's intensely religious.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2025, 03:55:38 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on January 11, 2025, 02:23:13 pmTo be fair, companies also fall prey to their executives' personal enrichment schemes, unless there are brutal measurements in place to stop it. For example, shareholder lawsuits, and shareholders willing to pursue them. Of course, no such tools exist for nonprofits, except perhaps the occasional tax audit.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2025, 11:49:54 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 11, 2025, 08:21:16 amYes, but whether this actually ensures its own survival other than short-term can be dubious.Regarding the Linux Foundation, this is no surprise per se, their financial reports show that they only spend about 3% for the Linux Kernel development.So what becomes interesting is what they spend the rest of the money on, and here is one example. There's a bunch of even weirder stuff for sure, just have a look at their last report.But I don't think that promoting Chromium, which already has over 90% of market share worldwide, is a good idea or even the role of the Linux Foundation, even if it's technically open-source.That shows a fundamental problem with the viability of independent open-source software - and sure enough, there is Mozilla and many other similar foundations. Large software projects need large teams and large budgets to survive, open-source or not. And yes, as soon as an organization reaches a certain size, non-profit or for-profit alike, money and otherwise interests completely outside of the object of the project itself start to become prominent.I have no real solution to that. I can just watch and laugh, or cry.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2025, 12:09:14 pm
content: I am more worried about what "Saint PayPal" (sarc) is doing now with their Money Web Extension.They promised funds for content creators, even to those who on socials are involved with Open Source, and Money (their Chrome extension) still promises free discount coupons ...... and .... it's all bullshit

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2025, 01:27:45 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 11, 2025, 11:49:54 pmYeah. Humans do human stuff, and it's not very good to be honest.Me, I do still putter with the C standard library replacement, and have done further investigation into better init and service management approaches, in the hopes that some day I'll at least publish them in some form. I already know we can do much better without upending or replacing everything we already have, with small incremental changes and updates, based on my experiments; I'm just currently stalled on the idea of hot-swapping init/svc manager without interrupting userspace, and blocking on certain socket-related showstoppers. If nothing else, it is fun, and possibly a positive contribution at some point.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2025, 11:18:50 pm
content: It's mainly an economic problem that is not easy to solve. At all. It may look like human "stupidity", and I guess in some ways, we could say that it is. The bottom line just looks like we seem unable (on average at least) to get a decent remuneration from our work (whatever it is) without having to compromise often in excessive ways.This guy goes through some of that (although more specifically about programming languages, but the ideas are general):

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 12, 2025, 11:35:03 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 11, 2025, 01:51:01 amTLDR for those who have no idea what this is and why it's funny?

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2025, 11:50:18 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 12, 2025, 11:35:03 pmWindows: corporate whims, spying, culture of business > users.Chrome: corporate whims, spying, culture of business > users.Desktop Linux users: "we've escaped Windows!"Linux foundation: "have some Chrome, it's good for you"Desktop Linux users: "wait what?"The Linux foundation is misleadingly named, it's a group that represents the interests of business (including Microsoft, Google, Meta, Adobe, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Redhat, Samsung, Cisco) in the open source world. It's also nicknamed "the GPL violators club", because many member companies flagrantly violate the Linux GPL license or the licenses of related software, which is illegal but you have to go to court to enforce it so many volunteers do not bother.It's a bit like if Apple created an organisation called "the right to repair foundation".Technically the LF does fund some open source works and some of their member companies contribute to important products like the Linux Kernel, but it's just as easy to see them as a group that wants to influence the work & culture of volunteer groups for their own corporate benefit whilst putting the minimum in themselves.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2025, 12:00:02 am
content: Like Money (which is now PayPal' property) violates what you signed when you decided to open an account to them.Corporates can be misleading

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2025, 12:50:29 am
content: Chrome is not Chromium. Chromium is as much a kosher open source project as LLVM is. Computing has become too complex for hobbyist projects to compete, it needs corporate sponsorship.Google really is one of the greatest contributors to open source, it's just that the fact that their income comes from advertising which causes their products to have some unfortunate properties. It would be nice if there was an open source consumer electronic ecosystem similar to Google's, but not funded by advertising. Ubuntu has made some attempts, but they lack the scale to really pull it off.

author: dferyance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2025, 07:51:58 pm
content: While yes, google has provided valuable contributions to open source software, it is really hard for me to view them overall as positive. The model their most of their software runs in is antithetical to open source and especially free software. Everything runs in some data center somewhere. Other than Android and Chrome, no one can run google's software on their own computers. Chrome is an enabler of this, we all expect software to be "web" which means it runs on someone else's computer. If google wanted to open source gmail, it wouldn't be of use to anyone. In contrast, the thunderbird project is useful.Chromium is sort of a trick. Google gets to control the web. They control chromium which is what nearly all browsers are based on. Sure it's open source, but its existence gives them control. More control than proprietary software normally has.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2025, 11:12:46 pm
content: It isn't positive at all IMO either, and as I mentioned, if nothing else, I don't like the monopolistic nature of Chromium, so the LF getting involved in its promotion is uh, wild.Plot twist though, it may not be all random. Google is having trouble with Chrome precisely and I've heard rumors that Google may "transfer" the project to the LF. We'll see if that was more than just rumors.