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.
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.