https://lwn.net/Articles/997193/ LWN.net Logo LWN .net News from the source LWN * Content + Weekly Edition + Archives + Search + Kernel + Security + Events calendar + Unread comments + ------------------------------------------------------------- + LWN FAQ + Write for us * Edition + Return to the Briefs page User: [ ] Password: [ ] [Log in] | [Subscribe] | [Register] Subscribe / Log in / New account Funding restored for man-page maintenance [Posted November 6, 2024 by corbet] Man pages maintainer Alejandro Colomar announced in September that he was suspending his work due to a lack of support. He has now let it be known that funding has been found for the next year at least: We've been talking for a couple of months, and we have already agreed to sign a contract through the LF [Linux Foundation], where a number of companies provide the funds for the contract. The contract will cover the next 12 months for the agreed amount, and we should sign it in the following days. Since I've already seen a draft of the contract, and it looks good, I've already started maintaining the project again, starting on Nov 1st. ----------------------------------------- [Log in] to post comments Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 6, 2024 16:31 UTC (Wed) by makendo (subscriber, #168314) [ Link] (8 responses) Nice to see man-pages back on track with funds. How could we raise awareness for technical documentation and secure money supply in the future? [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 6, 2024 23:26 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses) Unfortunately it looks like the only way that works is to: 1. Stop maintenance of what you are maintaining. 2. Wait till someone from some big company would ask you for support and then send them to Linux Foundation. 3. Keep firm on the stance that "no money == no support". Corporations (and Linux Foundations) have money but without solid justification they are not willing to share them and beancounters understand one and one thing only: tangible loss of money from negligence. As long as you are heroically keeping supporting things that they need they would happily ignore your pleas for help. P.S. I'm not even entirely sure that it's even a bad thing: if you are spending you money, your efforts, your health, etc to do something that you perceive as valuable thing to do, but nobody notices when you stop... was that service that you were selflessly doing actually valuable or were you just hoping that you are doing something worthwhile? Not an easy thing to tell. [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 6, 2024 23:47 UTC (Wed) by shironeko (subscriber, #159952) [Link] Agree, fun or money, preferably both. [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 6:39 UTC (Thu) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (1 responses) "Not an easy thing to tell." Actually, sometimes it is easy to tell... in hindsight. With all those infrastructure-y things you notice when bridges collapse, floods wash away lives, swathes of formerly arable land stop yielding crops. More insidious things like education, public health are in the same category: you can save a shitload of money today, later generations will have to pay back two orders of magnitude times that, plus some lives to go with it. Free software (called "open source" by those who like to raid the commons) has become infrastructure of sorts, for better or worse. [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 21:06 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] > called "open source" by those who like to raid the commons I find that note very funny in a light of the simple fact that the majority of what people call "free software" was made by people from "open source" camp (that is: the ones who don't subscribe to the idea that world without proprietary software is possible or even desirable). > has become infrastructure of sorts, for better or worse. It was mostly inevitable. Maybe it should be treated like the other kinds of infrastructure as be paid by taxpayers money? No one know what's the best way to fund the infrastructure, but that's how the majority of infrastructure is supported in other areas, why should software be any different? I guess we would need to first ensure each country would have it's own local open source core software first... the first step in that direction was done, but I wonder how long would it take to finally reach that state where we would no longer have one single Linux, one single Rust, one single C++... years?... decades?... Your guess is as good as mine. [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 13:49 UTC (Thu) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [ Link] But that's all that open source/free software is, those who find it useful or even depend on it will spend effort (example of not paid) or money on it (developer time). [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 9:55 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [ Link] (2 responses) >How could we raise awareness Reporting, reporting. I do not recall seeing e.g. an LWN article about an impending non-maintenance prior to September 2024. I guess I am also asking that everyone be more open about their state of mind early on. No one should feel ashamed for posting a terse "I have been considering stepping down [optionally insert timeframe or reasons]". [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 13:34 UTC (Thu) by alx.manpages (guest, #145117) [ Link] (1 responses) Actually, I had added a sentence in my email signatures for almost a year: ``` -- Looking for a remote C programming job at the moment. ``` (e.g.: ) Yeah, the audience of it is rather small, but that was as much as I could do. Some companies such as the big Linux distributors probably received and ignored the message. I think it's difficult to find a way that would have prevented this situation from happening. In fact, Red Hat still firmly opposes contributing with money to the maintenance the project. I think it was good that this brought the attention of so many people, and I think my case is just one instance. I hope this helps many other maintainers of FOSS projects in the long term. We can't require companies to pay for FOSS projects. I think it's up to each company to do what is morally correct. And that moral is up to each company or individual user. Just like as individuals we can decide to tip more or less for services we like and want to continue. I for example live in Aldaya, one of the villages struck by flooding a few days ago. For resuming normal life, I need a butcher, a fish market, a computer parts store, etc. If I pay for their products and services at the price they sell them, I won't have the products at all, because they won't be able to open again any soon. Being kind-of privileged, I feel morally obliged to donate some amount of money for the recovery, plus lending at 0% a larger amount. That will benefit me in the form of having these stores again ASAP. Even before this flooding happened, I already tipped those good stores significantly so that they would continue providing their great products and services (the butcher provides exceptional-quality meat, from the mountains of the north of Spain); those stores are not very profitable under normal operation. In the end it's up to each user to pay more than is required to have a continued good service or product. Paying the minimum (which for FOSS is 0) may eventually result in a Market for Lemons. I don't want to have to go buy meat from a supermarket where they bring them from animals that never saw the Sun, and so I opt to pay more than required. But how many people, and especially companies, have that mentality? [Reply to this comment] Better funding for documentation Posted Nov 7, 2024 21:18 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] > I think it's up to each company to do what is morally correct. World simply doesn't work like that. If company is public (IBM and thus RedHat are public companies as well as most other large companies that do things for Linux) then they have to do what their shareholders want, and, very expcliticly, not what is morally correct . And while shareholders may theoretically, demand that company should do "morally correct" things, but in practice they vote, more often than not, essentially 100 times out of 100, for one and one thing only: screw as many people as you can, fuck everyone as hard as you could, just give us money. Exceptions are rare (e.g. government-owned company may do something that is good for the government, not what is good for other shareholders and not what is good for the company itself), but even then "morally correct" is never part of the equation. > Just like as individuals we can decide to tip more or less for services we like and want to continue. Individuals could do that. Most companies couldn't. It's as simple as that. > But how many people, and especially companies, have that mentality? Most companies simply couldn't have that mentality. And even if their owners have that mentality they usually separate their community support (which surprising number of them provide, for real!) from what their company is doing. And even for them free software is an enigma: their company benefits from the free software, and they don't need that free software at all, but now they have to pay for something that they, personally, don't need or want to help their company? This just feels so much wrong on so many levels... [Reply to this comment] Summary in classic webcomics Posted Nov 7, 2024 8:42 UTC (Thu) by xose (guest, #535) [Link] https://www.goodtechthings.com/maintainers-vs-companies/ https://www.goodtechthings.com/oss-sos/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ [Reply to this comment] Misleading title Posted Nov 7, 2024 9:44 UTC (Thu) by donaldh (subscriber, #151569) [ Link] (3 responses) As I understand it, there never was funding, so saying funding "restored" in the title is a bit misleading. Funding has been found perhaps? [Reply to this comment] Misleading title Posted Nov 7, 2024 15:33 UTC (Thu) by alx.manpages (guest, #145117) [ Link] (2 responses) Agree. On the other hand, we could say I was funding my work there from my own pocket, which was itself full thanks to having a good job. :-) [Reply to this comment] Misleading title Posted Nov 7, 2024 17:17 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, # 23051) [Link] (1 responses) Thank you for your awesome work on man pages!!! [Reply to this comment] Thanks! Posted Nov 8, 2024 1:26 UTC (Fri) by alx.manpages (guest, #145117) [ Link] I didn't want to reply to everyone that showed their appreciation for my work in the man-pages project, so as not to spam the threads. But I should thank all of you, because I somehow managed to get a job (hopefully) for life out of my hobby, and it is in great part because of users like you that this news arrived into the management of the companies who had the money, and convinced them that this was good for them. Thank you very much! [Reply to this comment] Copyright (c) 2024, Eklektix, Inc. Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds