Again, I'm biased but here comes my biased thoughts anyways:
> How does it matter that the donation platform is closed-source?
Yes, I do think it does matter. Actually, I think that every open source service we open source developers depend on, should be open source and run in the open as much as possible.
It's great if a for-profit company can survive being 100% transparent and with all code open source. So far, that's been very difficult to achieve, especially with the expectations from VC funding and high-growth startups.
So instead, we need a different model for open source infrastructure, where the users are more involved in the funding of the platform. With that, users should feel they know what the money goes to and where it comes from. To solve that, the platform needs transparency.
So yes, I'd argue that a core open source platform for open source developers, indeed needs to be open source and transparent.
> So instead, we need a different model for open source infrastructure, where the users are more involved in the funding of the platform. With that, users should feel they know what the money goes to and where it comes from. To solve that, the platform needs transparency.
I am myself a proponent of open source, but I don’t think it is reasonable to expect that this is going to happen.
Who contributes to open source?
To my knowledge, open source contributors can be divided into the following groups:
- People volunteering their own time.
- Companies open sourcing software they themselves developed, bought the rights to or got the rights to through aquiring another company.
- Companies contributing their bug fixes and feature additions to existing open source software. (Sometimes overlaps with previous group, sometimes not.)
- Non-profit organizations.
- People employed by educational institutions.
- Governmental institutions.
And the motivations that these groups have for contributing to open source vary wildly. Both from group to group but also within each of the groups as well.
Some of the possible motivations include:
- Believing in the ideals of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
- Wanting to share cool stuff.
- Wanting to help others learn.
- Wanting to empower your fellow developers.
- Wanting to be empowered and in control of the software you run. Wanting freedom. Wanting to be able to run your software for any purpose and wanting to be able to modify your software in any way. Wanting to be able to run the software that you use today, tomorrow. Wanting to be in control of your data.
- Wanting to learn from others.
- Wanting to offer consulting other other paid services for people using your open source software, software that you contribute to, or software that you are skilled at using, modifying or integrating.
- Wanting the improvements that others outside of your company could bring to your software by you open sourcing it.
- Wanting to use existing, battle-tested open source software where you can instead of duplicating work and wasting hours while putting you at a competitive disadvantage compared to other businesses that make use of open source instead of needlessly reinventing the wheel.
- Wanting recognition from your peers.
And a million other motivations probably exist as well, but the ones I mentioned are the most obvious ones I can think of.
Given the list above, I think you will agree that a lot of the people involved in open source have no reason or motivation to reject the ongoing centralization.
Only if Microsoft does something with GitHub that has visibly negative effects on the specific motivations that someone has for contributing to open source will that person or group of people object.
My point is: Open source as a whole is moving in a direction counter to the one desired by some, such as yourself. For others it might not yet. And for yet others it might never. It all depends on why the person or the group of people is in open source in the first place.
> How does it matter that the donation platform is closed-source?
Yes, I do think it does matter. Actually, I think that every open source service we open source developers depend on, should be open source and run in the open as much as possible.
It's great if a for-profit company can survive being 100% transparent and with all code open source. So far, that's been very difficult to achieve, especially with the expectations from VC funding and high-growth startups.
So instead, we need a different model for open source infrastructure, where the users are more involved in the funding of the platform. With that, users should feel they know what the money goes to and where it comes from. To solve that, the platform needs transparency.
So yes, I'd argue that a core open source platform for open source developers, indeed needs to be open source and transparent.