The Linux Foundation has twelve platinum members, which donate $500000 per year, followed by twelve gold members, who donate $100000 per year. Below these two primary tiers lie the silver peasants, who each donate $5000-$25000 per year, based on number of employees. Looking at the list of twelve platinum members, I noticed something interesting.
Of the twelve platinum companies, six are “AI” companies or companies with massive investments in “AI”: Google, Huawei, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM/Red Hat. Then there’s Samsung Electronics, which is raking in stupendous amounts of money thanks to the “AI” bubble. Additionally, one of the gold members is Anthropic, another major “AI” company and makers of “Claude”, the sloppiest of slopcoding tools.[…]
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus Torvald’s employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical and often downright hostile towards “AI” to spend money on “AI” before the bubble bursts.
Just curious, what makes you think this is a lot?
Red cross, doctors without borders, Firefox are three that jumped into my mind. I don’t know their legal constructs in detail but Médecins Sans Frontières in their finance report 2024 described half a billion in available assets.
The Linux Foundation is quite small compared to the amount of projects they coordinate in my opinion and I’m surprised to read that you perceive this amount as a lot - that’s why I’m curious where your feeling comes from! (Note: im trying to learn,not bias to “it’s not a lot” is quite weird to me as well, talking about millions of dollars after all)
I have no baseline for thus sort of thing, might be why I thought this was a lot. Considering software engineer salaries alone puts a pretty big dent in this amount.
Yeah makes sense! I find it weird personally that I can go “oh yeah 7mio that’s not a lot” but at the same time “2 bucks for an ice cream scoop are you out of your fucking mind?!”