this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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We all need to demand that our governments start funds for open source software.
It's fucking ridiculous that you volunteer your time to build software that benefits millions and billions of people and the government is just like "nah not a charitable contribution to us so you can get fucked in every way".
When you draw a parallel to social charity both are largely volunteer based and underfunded. And both have direct and indirect gains for society.
Physical charity often serves basic needs. I'm not sure selecting qualifying quality open source projects is as easy. Need and gain assessments are a lot less clear.
If it's about public funding distribution, I would like to see some FOSS funding too, but not at the cost of or equal or more than social projects.
How many FOSS projects actually benefit "millions and billions of people"? That kind of impact feels like it's few and far between.
I agree, there is a lot of fluff. However I think FOSS is more of a web, not every piece of software has a billion users, but the collection of projects as a whole prop each other up. You have a language by itself, but also all of its libs that make the language useful.
I agree. The split and collective nature makes it hard to assess and fundamentally support though - which is what I was referring to in one point.