The project has involvement from people who have spent decades dedicated to these ideas — it doesn’t seem like a vanity project or a play for control. The most cynical view is that it is beneficial to the OP because it provides access to potential investments, which, sure, isn’t a pure philanthropic venture, but that seems a pretty small price to pay. The people involved are the people you would surely want running this project.
replyThe thing is that our endowment is focused on the "old" non-commercializable OSS projects, while VC is about "new" and commercializable stuff. The irony here is that these two things in my life lie on opposite sides of the spectrum—both in scope and risk tolerance.
replyOur bylaws are pretty standard:
replyhttps://endowment.dev/docs/bylaws/
What part of them is "undemocratic" in your view?
One is a board that decides whether something they do is a conflict of interest or not.
replyAre you getting your ethics cues from SCOTUS?
Are you aware the kinds of language that are in the legal docs on GH, and what that enables?
There are strict regulatory rules for 501c3 nonprofits (for instance - no private benefits for nonprofit insiders) and guidelines on how to implement them, for instance, via CoI policy, which we have: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/form-1023-purpose-...
replyBoard members of a nonprofit are subject to external supervision, including auditing, regulators and—in extreme cases—lawsuits. The Supreme Court is unique because it is the court of last resort for the entire United States—even a state supreme court justice would be able to have their recusal decisions reviewed by a higher court, much less a random board member of a nonprofit.
replyIn undemocratic organization wishes to fund my development of OpenStreetMap-related software I would gladly take money.
replyAs long as it is not something outright evil like theoretical Gazprom Open Source Fund or something similar.
What government programs in the US are stably funding open-source developers? I think most government-funded open source projects are very gunshy about looking for new funding because of the Trump administration completely politicizing grants and funding. I would not want to have to sign an anti-BDS pledge to get my open source project funded, and I would imagine that goes for many people in the community. Also, what "dismissive comments" are you referring to? The only one I saw was "Government support won't work for OSS at scale — it's too globally decentralized". Which is a fair criticism—open source projects are incredibly globalized, and getting e.g. New York State to fund an open source project that has contributors from Ukraine, India and China is a headache I don't think anyone would want to try and go through. There's just no benefit to the state administrators to fund that kind of project—they want to support parochial, home-grown projects with local ties.
replyExactly! A few more considerations on gov support of OSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47171562
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