I think companies with deep pockets need to step up a bit. I mean if anyone at FAANG etc are using packages like lodash, they should ideally team up and create some type of a funded group/co-op that funds these libraries and their maintenance and removes dependency from one person. You cannot just "charity" the way out of these situations.
Completely agree. I hate that companies do not give back to this -- but it is changing and that's a positive.
Stripe & Segment have their open source grants, WhatsApp Co-Founder (Jan Koum) donated $1MM USD to FreeBSD, DuckDuckGo donates to companies since 2011 (https://duckduckgo.com/donations) etc.
At the company I have founded, I am putting my money where my mouth is -- we have a budget to allocate up to $25,000 per year to open source products that we find value in. As we hit certain revenue milestones, I have every intention of donating an even larger % to funding open source initiatives as part of our "giving back" corporate social responsibility.
It is a shame most companies do not do the same. I cannot change them, but I can control change within what I do. So, thank you to all the makers and builders out there, I will make it my personal mission to figure out a way to give back to you!
I'm not sure about the taxable donation (did you perhaps mean a tax-deductible donation instead?) but I have a few ways. It looks like that thread links to a company that's specializing in that, were they able to solve your use case? If not, feel free to ping me and I can connect you w/ the folks on our team who have this as a key objective for them and have figured out most of the logistics.
I really appreciate you attempting to do this though, thank you!
I was in contact with these guys but nothing came of it so far ... I think they’re still working on it but I don’t know. Would be great to find out options. Thank you for your help.
Side note: lack of funding for open source is a common complaint it seems, but I was personally surprised it’s actually not trivial at all to give money open source ...
