this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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I think the bigger question is how many corporations are supporting foss projects? I'm sure a lot of us contribute a bit here and there if we can and I'm sure it makes a difference - but if some of these corporations, making billions of dollars profit, contribute just a tiny fraction of their wealth it could make a huge difference.
It's the same argument as recycling, turning off lights, walking instead of driving etc. etc. - yes there are 8 billion of us and if we all do it, it will make a difference, but the difference we make is still not significant compared to corporate greed.
We are being gaslit to accept yet another scenario where we socialize the cost and privatize the profit.
Big question or not, we can only control ourselves.
Everyone always stares at other people's resources and imagine how great it would be if those resources were used how we like, but at the end of the day, we control our resources.
So is it a big question if it doesn't really matter because we can't do anything about it?
A corporation has no obligations towards foss projects, no different to any individual being made to fund them.
This isn't true, a lot of corporations use and benefit from the foss and they should be supporting those projects.
They should also be supporting projects that could replace the applications that they spend millions on each year. When your CIO says that they are using 'whatever corpo system' because a viable open source project doesn't exist, they should start funding the non-viable projects so they can become viable.
Worse they often report issues that affect them but still don't commit resources to resolving those issues.
As long as the end user is abiding by the licensing terms it shouldn't be an expectation that any additional support is coming from anywhere. This is the nature of foss. The contributors should know this.
Licensing terms only govern the legal aspects, not moral and social aspects.
Of course, but as we know there is no universal agreements for either. The expectations are ill placed.
We don't need the madman who thinks suffering is good to change their mind for sensible people to act, as medicine doesn't need the madman who thinks always throwing up is healthy. We place expectations on others everyday: like when we walk past a stranger. Perfect agreement is not needed to have expectations, or demand better from those who benefit from others.
Then use a noncommercial licence.
The problem is, I feel like more recent MBA lessons tell people that the "rising tide that lifts all ships" is a business death sentence, for reasons unexplained. Many of them now would rather sink the whole ocean if they believe that their business will sink a little bit less.
So are every other individual projects
You are correct - they have no legal obligation. They do however have a moral obligation. It seems to me that if corporations want to be people when it comes to things like political donations then they should be people when it comes to their moral obligations as well.
We all do as well. Many individuals who use Linux, LibreOffice and other legendary open source works would be much better off if we as individuals performed our moral obligations towards developers and volunteers. I think we would be in a different world if we paid them even a fraction of what we pay to big corps.
I agree with you.