Meanwhile I read your article, it’s much more clear now.
Can I summarize it like this?
All companies with > $100K salary budget should pay,
%5 of their this budget to “open source”
Two questions:
What do you think about “Free-rider problem”? Do you think “badge” & “social pressure” could compensate this?
If we are asking from “all companies to pay an amount relative to their size”, do you think government taxes could also be an option? So instead of making this optional and hoping to convince all companies, can we enforce the contract, so we won’t fall into “Free-rider problem”? Do you see any inherent flaws of considering this option?
And of course, these options are not mutually exclusive. If I would have the chance, I’d try both options and see which one performs better.
I moved this out into its own topic so it doesn’t distract from the index, which is a stand-alone project.
Pretty much, yeah.
The hypothesis is that the right amount of social pressure would mitigate the free rider problem, yeah. If we make it a necessary part of any cool company’s profile (much like remote-work or awesome benefits) to pay your dues to open source, we can effect a culture change in the favour of open source sustainability.
I also wouldn’t mind it if someone experimented with a legally enforceable clause in the same spirit as the Fair Share Clause. In Oslo, Gothenburg and a handful of other cities I’ve been to, you don’t have to pay for a ticket, you can just get on the bus, tram or metro unhindered. But there’s a maybe 1/500 chance that you’ll get asked by a ticket inspector to present your ticket. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know that enough people still pay tickets (some because it’s the right thing to do, others because they can’t deal with the stress of possibly getting caught free-riding) to fund the public transport infrastructure.
I absolutely think taxes is an option, but open source is still such a foreign concept in most governments that I don’t think there’s much point in pushing hard for that to happen until we as a community has come up with a “working tax prototype” of sorts. There’s also the issue of open source being an exceptionally globalist phenomenon.