this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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It's much better to fund projects using a nonprofit foundation. There are plenty of examples of this. The problem with corporate muscle behind it s that development priorities end up being driven by the corporations doing the funding. In some cases, like the Linux kernel, there can be enough alignment so that it's not problematic. However, Chrome is an excellent example of how corporate backed open source goes horribly wrong.
Like I said your mileage may vary, also even a good business like Steam can turn bad over time. That's the fundamental problem with privately owned businesses. A lot of utterly deplorable companies today started out with the best intentions.
That relies on donations which may or may not come. I understand in a perfect world that makes sense, but in the real world even those foundations often rely on corporate muscle. Without that enterprise money, I'm not sure how they'd stand.
Aren't you basically just describing FOSS and framing it as a complaint? Valve for example has a vested interest in improving their software stack, and they do just that by donating both money and engineers to various projects. If these open source projects did not exist, they would have to spend the same or even more money on a proprietary licensed alternative, or to develop their own solution.