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sysreq_
apexalpha
Well since the Cloud Native foundation is a subsidiary of the Linux foundation this makes sense.
cdud3
Feels a lot like the Mozilla Foundation which also ended to do everything but there Browser.
sudo_cowsay
is it investments or just donating/funding for no compensation?
marsven_422
[dead]
woodruffw
Without bending over backwards to defend the Linux Foundation, I'll point out that the 97% number means very little -- the percentage that actually matters is the percentage that doesn't go towards funding open source at all. The Linux Foundation hasn't been solely about Linux for decades; they are (facially) responsible for hosting a very large number of open source projects.
cyanydeez
one could also argue that software that build on top of it create the ecosystem that can drive linux adoption.
This critique is myopic.
wolttam
8 million (~3%) towards the Linux kernel
180 million (~65%) towards ancillary project support, which includes a huge ecosystem of useful technologies around linux
Their 'corporate operations' overhead is like 5% of expenses. whoop.
SwellJoe
And, 4% toward blockchain.
tdeck
Is there a description of the other projects that fall under that heading? I was curious but didn't see it skimming through the document.
vintagedave
2% on the Linux kernel. 1% on open hardware. 4% on blockchain.
I think that says it.
They do support many other projects and seem to be stewards of the Linux ecosystem in general, but... 4% on blockchain?! I also feel many other projects should have their own funding: they're key to many businesses and that the 'Linux' foundation sponsors them is (a) good but (b) misplaced in the overall messed up system that is open source reliance and sponsorship.
teo_zero
To be fair, you should say that over 97% of the Linux Foundation's budget goes not to the Linux kernel.
There's more to Linux than the kernel.
Snild
Don't let Stallman hear you say that!
ThePowerOfFuet
GNU/Linux is rapidly becoming systemd/Linux at this rate...
yxhuvud
Especially with distros like Ubuntu throwing out gnu coreutils.
jdub
I've had occasional concerns about the Linux Foundation and how it operates, but there's no question it has been a transformative contribution to Open Source.
A bunch of folks decided to get off their butts and gather donations to support Linux... and then it snowballed. Cool. The creators and members get to decide how they contribute, and projects get to decide if they want to participate. There are alternatives for projects that need to "raise and spend", and some are 501(c)(3).
(Also keep in mind that techrights.org has been an unhinged shit sheet attacking individuals and companies for insufficient purity for decades now.)
Gathering6678
The title is misleading in that it makes people think only 3% goes to Linux as a whole, while that number is about the linux kernel only.
Some other comments mention blockchain: one could argue for or against endorsing blockchain technology, but that doesn't seem to be the point of this article.
walrus01
I see a whole boatload of fairly big and important open source infrastructure projects that run on Linux. Sure, maybe 97% of its budget doesn't go directly to the linux kernel, but they're supporting a lot of critical stuff.
ExpertAdvisor01
Yeah like blockchain
tdeck
The executive compensation is pretty shocking
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
blackjack_
Actually crazy that Linus just takes home 1.5M per year for one of the largest contributions to tech of anyone in the world. Obviously nobody needs more than that per year, but this pay is 1/100 or 1/1000th of many tech executives that have contributed very little comparatively.
potamic
A wealth tax than caps one's inflow to something like a million a year makes a lot of sense. To all the billionaire sympathizers who worry about incentives and technological progress, this here is a perfect (and not the only) example of how intrinsic motivation can beat extrinsic motivation by a huge margin.
There will always be people who value intrinsic incentives and even more so when there is a lack or limitation of extrinsic ones. Society will do well to structure itself primarily around such people. Such people are also less likely to cause damage to others because it's very rare that damage to others fulfills one's intrinsic needs. Linus is arguably a net positive to human society than the top 20 billionaires combined. We need more of him and less of the others.
9753268996433
Why so greedy?
Cap it to $12k/a, the average global personal income.
xienze
> A wealth tax than caps one's inflow to something like a million a year makes a lot of sense. To all the billionaire sympathizers
Perhaps the "billionaire sympathizers" are people who can manage to see that the bar for what is considered an unacceptable amount of wealth will keep being revised lower and lower until it affects them. Here you are already proposing that a person shouldn't be allowed to earn more than a total of a million dollars in income every year, which caps one's lifetime wealth accumulation at $40-60M[0]. Which would make anyone able to achieve anywhere close to that sum as wealthy as today's wealthiest persons. After which the next person will suggest that such a thing shouldn't be allowed for the betterment of society.
0: assuming you can start earning that much starting at age 20 and you intend on retiring between 60 to 80, so obviously the range can go up or down a bit.
logicchains
>There will always be people who value intrinsic incentives and even more so when there is a lack or limitation of extrinsic ones. Society will do well to structure itself primarily around such people.
Europe has developed no new big companies in the past two decades precisely because this isn't true. The vast majority of successful companies and products are developed by people motivated by money, and if you try to prevent them from being rewarded for their hard work then they just go somewhere where their effort is more welcome.
tome
> Obviously nobody needs more than that per year
What's the smallest amount you'd say it is obvious that no one needs per year?
wmf
That's the difference between giving your work away for free or not. 100x.
jancsika
1st place: $1 million with my work running on billions of devices
A Very Distant 2nd place: $100 million and a beautifully framed picture of my masterpiece, The Conjoined Triangles of Success
balamatom
Or maybe the difference between doing work, and controlling humans by convincing them that what they're doing is "work".
rmunn
> Obviously nobody needs more than that per year ...
You are, of course, in a position to know what everybody on Earth needs.
What if someone wants to give $10 million away per year to worthy charities? Will you tell them they can't?
Or... what if someone wants to own something you consider wastefully expensive? Is it your job to tell them they shouldn't? Or is it wiser to adopt the position of humility and say "Well, it's their business, not mine, what they spend their money on"?
It's easy to be motivated by envy, even when we think we aren't. It's much better for your soul, and your peace of mind, to adopt the "let them" mentality, and not decide what other people, whose lives you know nothing about, need.
apexalpha
There is a big difference between 'needs' and 'wants'.
I'll defend the argument no one 'needs' more than 1.5 mill per year.
I agree with you greed is endless and lots of people want more and will rationalize their hoarding while others, often in their own communities, suffer.
jdub
Opponents of obscene wealth/income inequality are typically not motivated by envy – that is your own projection.
rmunn
Interesting vote-to-downvote ratio my comment got. Seems there are a lot more people with anti-libertarian beliefs hanging out at HN at the moment than there are people who lean libertarian.
Since it was not my intention to engage in ideological battle (you'll notice I framed it as "good for your soul and peace of mind" rather than make any kind of political argument for it), I'll leave it there and not reply to any of the answers I got. But it was quite enlightening to see how people reacted to that comment.
woodruffw
Is it? Percentage-wise, executive compensation appears to be lower than well-regarded technology nonprofits[1][2]. In some sense that's extremely weird, since LF is a trade organization rather than a public-interest nonprofit. Their financiers are huge corporations, not individual donors!
(This is the core of the bigger problem with LF, IMO -- they simply don't represent non-corporate OSS interests at all, beyond some lip service.)
[1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/430...
[2]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
andrekandre
it does fit the trend...
[0] https://www.epi.org/chart/ceopay2019-figure-a-ceo-realized-d...
nextaccountic
I'm actually more curious on why a lot of directors receive $0, while others receive almost 1M
wmf
The ones getting paid are probably working full time for LF while the unpaid ones are just on the board and presumably have other jobs.
gregoryl
That seems to be correct. You can see the hours disclosure here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
bombcar
Directors sound like the Board, the others are Executive Directors (eg, they do the work).
mcv
Surprised to learn that some guy I used to work with (Gabriele Columbro) is now apparently a very expensive executive director at the Linux Foundation. I had no idea his career took that turn.
I think it's the same guy, at least.
vkou
> pretty shocking
Shockingly low.
Way more people who are doing way less good (many of them are net-negative to society by a very large margin, and we'd all be better off if they stopped going to work) for the world in corporate America make way more money.
Shit, a random L7 SWE or some low level manager makes more money than most of these people.
pyuser583
I’m guessing it’s below market rates. Silicon Valley and all.
countWSS
What is the 181M$ mysterious "Project Support" in the graph means? Linux is labeled separately, so it cannot be the "Project".
themafia
That's revenue. This article isn't clear at all. Here's their actual tax filing:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
More than half the money spent on Conferences and Salaries with the rest being functional expenses. Nothing in the "grants" or "benefits to members" column. Prima facie this would not be an organization I would ever donate to.
Which is good because most of their revenue comes from fees and services rendered.
me_bx
The $181M is in the Expenses categories chart, not revenue.
cortesoft
You aren’t supposed to donate to them!
jrflowers
My favorite part of this is when they say this
> Linus Torvalds is not in charge and is no longer compensated fairly, either. The highest paid people don't even use Linux. Torvalds is no longer in the top 10 (not anymore).
And then link to a filing that shows his “compensation” being lower than the others but also having an extra million dollars in the “other” column.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
It kind of looks like if you count the extra million dollars earmarked for him he would be the highest-paid person on the list?
crvdgc
Another angle is that most donations to Linux kernel are in the form of paid employees doing kernel work. I wonder how much the kernel need besides that.
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Reading through the list of projects that the Linux Foundation supports (via infrastructure, governance, events, etc) with the other 181 million is honestly shocking. They are supporting, among like a thousand others - NodeJS/OpenJS, PyTorch, Electron, K8s, vLLM, ONNX, PX4, GraphQL - plus the 'smaller' entries like Zephyr, Containerd, gRPC, KiCAD, ESLint, Fastify, etc. Their portfolio is literally insane. This is the BlackRock of the entire digital world.