'Open Source Software Funding Report' Finds 86% of Corporate Contributions are Employees' Time (linuxfoundation.org)
(Saturday December 21, 2024 @11:34AM (EditorDavid)
from the fun-with-funding dept.)
- Reference: 0175716011
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/12/21/0016200/open-source-software-funding-report-finds-86-of-corporate-contributions-are-employees-time
- Source link: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/understanding-the-state-of-open-source-funding-in-2024
The Linux Foundation partnered with GitHub and Harvard's [1]Laboratory for Innovation Science to research organization-driven investments in open source software — the how and the why — surveying over 500 organizations around the world.
So what are [2]the highlights from [3]the published report ?
> The median responding organization invests $520,600 (2023 USD) of annual value to OSS.
>
> Responding organizations annually invest $1.7 billion in open source, which can be extrapolated to estimate that approximately $7.7 billion is invested across the entire open source ecosystem annually. 86% of investment is in the form of contribution labor by employees and contractors working for the funding organization, with the remaining 14% being direct financial contributions.
But the ultimate goal of the research was ideas "to improve monitoring and investing in open source" (to "create a more sustainable and impactful open source economy...")
> In this research, we discovered a few key obstacles that make this kind of data capture challenging... [O]rganizations have blind spots when it comes to the specifics of their contributions. Many respondents knew where they contribute, but only a portion of those could answer how many labor hours went into their OSS contributions or the percentage of budget that went to OSS. Second, the decentralized nature of organizational contributions, without explicit policies or centralized groups that encourage and organize this effort, make reporting even more challenging...
>
> [W]e recommend that policies and practices are put in place to encourage employees to self-report their contributions, and do so using their employee email addresses to leave fingerprints on their work. We also suggest that open source work is consolidated under a single banner, such as an Open Source Program Office (OSPO). Finally, we suggest incorporating contribution monitoring into the organization's pipeline. We developed [4]a toolkit to help improve data capture and monitoring .
[1] https://lish.harvard.edu/
[2] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/understanding-the-state-of-open-source-funding-in-2024
[3] https://opensourcefundingsurvey2024.com/
[4] https://github.com/sboysel/open-source-funding-toolkit
So what are [2]the highlights from [3]the published report ?
> The median responding organization invests $520,600 (2023 USD) of annual value to OSS.
>
> Responding organizations annually invest $1.7 billion in open source, which can be extrapolated to estimate that approximately $7.7 billion is invested across the entire open source ecosystem annually. 86% of investment is in the form of contribution labor by employees and contractors working for the funding organization, with the remaining 14% being direct financial contributions.
But the ultimate goal of the research was ideas "to improve monitoring and investing in open source" (to "create a more sustainable and impactful open source economy...")
> In this research, we discovered a few key obstacles that make this kind of data capture challenging... [O]rganizations have blind spots when it comes to the specifics of their contributions. Many respondents knew where they contribute, but only a portion of those could answer how many labor hours went into their OSS contributions or the percentage of budget that went to OSS. Second, the decentralized nature of organizational contributions, without explicit policies or centralized groups that encourage and organize this effort, make reporting even more challenging...
>
> [W]e recommend that policies and practices are put in place to encourage employees to self-report their contributions, and do so using their employee email addresses to leave fingerprints on their work. We also suggest that open source work is consolidated under a single banner, such as an Open Source Program Office (OSPO). Finally, we suggest incorporating contribution monitoring into the organization's pipeline. We developed [4]a toolkit to help improve data capture and monitoring .
[1] https://lish.harvard.edu/
[2] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/understanding-the-state-of-open-source-funding-in-2024
[3] https://opensourcefundingsurvey2024.com/
[4] https://github.com/sboysel/open-source-funding-toolkit
employees time (Score:1)
> 'Open Source Software Funding Report' Finds 86% of Corporate Contributions are Employees' Time
And? Is that a problem?
Re: employees time (Score:2)
> And? Is that a problem?
Yes and no. It makes productivity in the OSS market more difficult to track. And that's a problem when trying to sell OSS over proprietary to the bean counters. But no. Because nobody really has a good handle on how much time is being spent by employees screwing off or doing other non productive tasks anyway.
Re:employees time [is not valuable?] (Score:2)
Did you RTFS?
LOL
Even the summary?
ROFLMAO
But I've always felt FOSS is doomed because of the fundamental confusion about what "free" means.
free != 0 money
(Like time >> money?)
Re: (Score:2)
The implication is that employees are giving away company time to OSS projects and that should be stopped. Hence the demands for tracking employees across projects by using company email addresses and other fingerprints that can be tracked. ($10.00 says when "enough" contributions are made some company will try to sue the project for ownership due to "substantial company investment", "works for hire", or or some other such nonsense.)