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.
Author fears to say outright that he believes that Linux Foundation is corrupt organisation that takes bribes. First they don’t recieve a lot of money, small IT company I’ve worked before had ten times that money with <5 projects and 5-10 developers at time. Company I’ve worked before that had monthly profit bigger than yearly donations that LF recieves. Developer work costs a lot, menagerial work as well. Second, LF is hard to pressure by these supposed agents of corruption. Third, in the event of LF actually being corrupt they can’t really force LT to say shit, they don’t have ‘or else’ option.
The Linux Foundation is ‘corrupt’, but not for the kernel, funding Linus is the green washing.
The Linux Foundation is a lobbying organisation for Big Tech, not Free Software evangelicals.
Do they claim to be Free Software evangelicals and not a neutral org for big tech? IIRC being a neutral lobbying org is their whole thing.
They didn’t pick the name “Linux” by mistake, it’s a deliberate misdirection for the masses, while having the fallback of “we didn’t lie”.
Same with the subtle move from Free Software to Open Source. They benifit from peoples misunderstanding.
Yes, and? They aren’t the great saviours of Free Software but an entity that serves the purpose to the big tech corps.
None of my points are invalidated.
I wasn’t trying to invalidate you, just discuss the Linux Foundation. But I will bet that “small IT company I’ve worked before had ten times that money” has 10 times less power than The Linux Foundation. And I’ll point out that the Linux Foundation projects get separate funding and engineering from their members.
Obviously, point was that a $<10 milions a year isn’t all that big number for an org size of LF.
That’s an interesting perspective. I got the vibe that the writer was suggesting more of a “LF won’t bite the hands that feed them, lest the amount of feeding decrease,” but perhaps I didn’t read between the lines deep enough.