For example, the developer of asus-linux.org who made the kernel contributions for Asus ROG laptops and the accompanying ROG Control Center recently walked away, due to exhaustion.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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I couldn't find anything about this on the Asus Linux blog, am I just dumb and looking in the wrong place? I use Asus-linux and didn't know about this :(
Edit: ~~unfortunately it seems that bullshitters who make shit up on the spot have made their way over to Lemmy~~ boo me
For myself, I make sure I've done my due diligence before I might accuse someone of dishonesty, rather than making a minimum effort.
From his Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/flukejones
I've burned out on LKML and many many other parts of the FOSS world. It's exhausting. As such, I will not be working on Linux for asus device. It's not something I can devote huge chunks of time to for free anymore.
Thank you everyone who has donated something over the last years.
Same on his Patreon
Open source should be funded by the tax-payers, or all code should be forcibly open-source (something like AGPL)
Any other models feels like they would create perverse incentives
Also recurring donations feels like a better way than one-time tips
By which country?
Saudi Arabia.
All of them? Maybe an international consortium that pays devs in their home currency.
Each of them.
I'm sure many people could point to hundreds of dangers around open-source programs relying on government funding. Yet, I can't argue that it seems to be a necessity.
I mean, look what happened with TCP/IP.
A fucking disaster for humanity on a global scale
???
So what's the problem with those protocols?
How do you decide which open source projects are worthy of taxpayer money, and how much does a given project get?
I have a couple projects I’ve put up in GitHub as open source. Would they qualify? Or are you just talking about well known open source projects like Linux?
Same as all other tax funded projects, by some elected people who likely have no idea about the project.
Joking aside, we will see more of this funding due to governments moving to open source software as they tend to want to fund their own stuff.
So are closed source developers.
But at least they're paid
It’s funny how common this mindset is in the self-hosting community: “If I’m running it on my own hardware, the software should basically be free… maybe I’ll toss a tiny ‘tip’ if I feel generous.”
The logic seems to be that since there’s no ongoing server cost, the developer’s time, skill, and effort must somehow be worth nothing and that we should magically fund the entire project through some hypothetical cloud version that they themselves will never use.
It’s like showing up to a brewery with your own growler and expecting the beer to be free because you didn’t use their glass.
To be fair - this mindset is hardly exclusive to self-hosters. The dotcom era itself kicked off because it was easier to get advertisers to pay for server costs than users.
Careful bro you're making it sound like exploitation has been normalized in the name of 'free software', but actually... Oh wait.
Exactly right.
I read this blog post yesterday and it was insightful.
Seems like we could solve multiple problems in one go here…
I liked the article. It sung to my heart. I've been in this world for a while. Lived through the failure and hyperacalars just taking without giving back.
I don't know what to think. But I'm not happy with where we are and it's nice to hear someone else talking about it.
I'm all for ethical licensing, and defensive licensing, but we'll likely end up with an unmanageable soup of various licenses that everyone is nervous about misinterpreting. We lose efficacy and everyone will just default back to the same handful of licenses we're currently using.
I think unless it was a small number of crystal clear alternative licenses with broadly agreeable terms, we'd get chaos, followed by complacency.
More likely, people's work will get thrown into the bin because its poorly licensed.
Well that's kind of what I'm getting at. How many times does that happen before everybody just goes back to using GPL, MIT, etc...
The consequences of what that article proposes is we're gonna be back to this period of history where companies were all using proprietary technology that self-taught devs won't ever learn and that students will only learn if they can afford a school that can use it, in addition to poor developer experience because of maintainer agenda being driven by money rather than community requests.
Fuuuuck that!
Same deal with lawyers that go into public interest. It pays super low, compared to corporate and similar that has money to throw at their employees.
A lot of FOSS projects are freemium based which seems viable for larger more complex projects.
In these projects it's common to see the developer get paid for adding features on top of the core version, for a SaaS version, for custom development, or for offering support.
Other projects with a lot of community interest - and a good "community manager" style organizer can attract contributors in the form of pulls, bug testing and reports, and widespread use which generates valuable marketing. These projects only exist because of the labor of love from the whole community.
I've been using CachyOS and impressed by the array of available software, and it was only in the back of my mind, the thought; "Wow, so much of this is so refined and polished. I wonder who has motive to maintain it?"
Joke's on me, the motive is hardly there - and it's a shitty time for it with Windows announcing that 10 is the last version and that there are no plans for a new one.
I'm glad Valve has a profit motive towards open source right now, but especially in a world where fewer people can donate at random, I really hoped that the model wasn't specifically built to rely just on tip jars.
I don't understand much about the finances of the FOSS world, but do companies like FUTO help at all? I don't even know how FUTO makes money, to be honest.
They're not a company, FUTO is one rich guy.
FUTO is both a company (LLC, to be specific) and a rich guy.
That was my intuition after looking around their site
I know how futa makes money
What is to be expected when the current trend among CEOs is to get the same stuff done with less employees and same salaries hence resulting in either you getting fired, resigning or doing x2 the amount of work with no real life improvements. Who would have the willingness to continue their side hobbies/project like contributions to open source when your main life is in shambles.
All of the large scale projects are funded and maintained by enterprises
A lot of larger foss projects do open up a foundation or another legal entity. Mostly due to regulations or dealing with donations. But it's hard to call them enterprises
Should there be OSS?
No. They should change it to CIA.