11 ms·
Over 97% of the 'Linux' Foundation's Budget Goes Not to Linux
- ilia-a 4mo agoLooks like lots of grift going on. Forgetting other categories for a moment, the fact that corp operations are nearly 2x the money going to linux kernel says it all...
- tdeck 4mo agoThe executive compensation is pretty shocking https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
- pyuser583 4mo agoI’m guessing it’s below market rates. Silicon Valley and all.
- nextaccountic 4mo agoI'm actually more curious on why a lot of directors receive $0, while others receive almost 1M
- bombcar 4mo agoDirectors sound like the Board, the others are Executive Directors (eg, they do the work).
- wmf 4mo agoThe ones getting paid are probably working full time for LF while the unpaid ones are just on the board and presumably have other jobs.
- gregoryl 4mo agoThat seems to be correct. You can see the hours disclosure here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801/202543189349311694/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
- woodruffw 4mo agoIs it? Percentage-wise, executive compensation appears to be lower than well-regarded technology nonprofits[1][2]. In some sense that's extremely weird, since LF is a trade organization rather than a public-interest nonprofit. Their financiers are huge corporations, not individual donors! (This is the core of the bigger problem with LF, IMO -- they simply don't represent non-corporate OSS interests at all, beyond some lip service.) [1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/43091431 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/430... [2]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460967274 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
- andrekandre 4mo agoit does fit the trend... [0] https://www.epi.org/chart/ceopay2019-figure-a-ceo-realized-direct-compensation-and-the-sp-500-index-2018-dollars-1965-2018/?view=embed&embed_template=charts_v2013_08_21&embed_date=20260505&onp=171191 https://www.epi.org/chart/ceopay2019-figure-a-ceo-realized-d...
- woodruffw 4mo agoNot to belabor the point, but LF is a 501(c)(6), not a 501(c)(3). They don't behave like your intuition for a public-interest nonprofit because they aren't one. You shouldn't give them your money!
- s0ss 4mo agoWhy not?
- loeg 4mo agoIt's an industry trade association, for the benefit of its members. You aren't one of its members. (I'd suggest spending 60 seconds researching the difference between a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) on wikipedia or whatever.)
- s0ss 4mo agoI have, maybe you should too. Other than stating it’s not a 501c3, I haven’t heard a compelling argument. I think it’s OK that Linus gets paid to do what he does. Everyone here definitely benefits from this non profit organization. It’s ok we see it differently.
- wolttam 4mo agoThey get their money from corporate sponsors, because those sponsors benefit greatly from the existence of the Linux ecosystem. They don't need the contributions of individuals to keep going forever and ever.
- blackjack_ 4mo agoActually crazy that Linus just takes home 1.5M per year for one of the largest contributions to tech of anyone in the world. Obviously nobody needs more than that per year, but this pay is 1/100 or 1/1000th of many tech executives that have contributed very little comparatively.
- wmf 4mo agoThat's the difference between giving your work away for free or not. 100x.
- balamatom 4mo agoOr maybe the difference between doing work, and controlling humans by convincing them that what they're doing is "work".
- jancsika 4mo ago1st place: $1 million with my work running on billions of devices A Very Distant 2nd place: $100 million and a beautifully framed picture of my masterpiece, The Conjoined Triangles of Success
- potamic 4mo agoA wealth tax than caps one's inflow to something like a million a year makes a lot of sense. To all the billionaire sympathizers who worry about incentives and technological progress, this here is a perfect (and not the only) example of how intrinsic motivation can beat extrinsic motivation by a huge margin. There will always be people who value intrinsic incentives and even more so when there is a lack or limitation of extrinsic ones. Society will do well to structure itself primarily around such people. Such people are also less likely to cause damage to others because it's very rare that damage to others fulfills one's intrinsic needs. Linus is arguably a net positive to human society than the top 20 billionaires combined. We need more of him and less of the others.
- xienze 4mo ago> A wealth tax than caps one's inflow to something like a million a year makes a lot of sense. To all the billionaire sympathizers Perhaps the "billionaire sympathizers" are people who can manage to see that the bar for what is considered an unacceptable amount of wealth will keep being revised lower and lower until it affects them. Here you are already proposing that a person shouldn't be allowed to earn more than a total of a million dollars in income every year, which caps one's lifetime wealth accumulation at $40-60M[0]. Which would make anyone able to achieve anywhere close to that sum as wealthy as today's wealthiest persons. After which the next person will suggest that such a thing shouldn't be allowed for the betterment of society. 0: assuming you can start earning that much starting at age 20 and you intend on retiring between 60 to 80, so obviously the range can go up or down a bit.
- vkou 4mo ago> pretty shocking Shockingly low. Way more people who are doing way less good (many of them are net-negative to society by a very large margin, and we'd all be better off if they stopped going to work) for the world in corporate America make way more money. Shit, a random L7 SWE or some low level manager makes more money than most of these people.
- mcv 4mo agoSurprised to learn that some guy I used to work with (Gabriele Columbro) is now apparently a very expensive executive director at the Linux Foundation. I had no idea his career took that turn. I think it's the same guy, at least.
- countWSS 4mo agoWhat is the 181M$ mysterious "Project Support" in the graph means? Linux is labeled separately, so it cannot be the "Project".
- themafia 4mo agoThat's revenue. This article isn't clear at all. Here's their actual tax filing: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801/202543189349311694/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... More than half the money spent on Conferences and Salaries with the rest being functional expenses. Nothing in the "grants" or "benefits to members" column. Prima facie this would not be an organization I would ever donate to. Which is good because most of their revenue comes from fees and services rendered.
- woodruffw 4mo agoWithout bending over backwards to defend the Linux Foundation, I'll point out that the 97% number means very little -- the percentage that actually matters is the percentage that doesn't go towards funding open source at all. The Linux Foundation hasn't been solely about Linux for decades; they are (facially) responsible for hosting a very large number of open source projects.
- cyanydeez 4mo agoone could also argue that software that build on top of it create the ecosystem that can drive linux adoption. This critique is myopic.
- daviddever23box 4mo agoAgreed - without user-space, developer and deployment tools, there's not much for the kernel to do. 3% on the kernel might even seem overly high.
- coldtea 4mo agoAnd one would argue without actually focusing on Linux the kernel and Linux distro on top for the average user, they're just funding server FOSS for use by fat companies
- woodruffw 4mo agoThat’s explicitly their mission, though! They’re a trade organization that advances member interests, not a public interest nonprofit. (In effect, they’re a coordinating body for fat companies. They do indeed fund things in those companies’ interests, but they do it with corporate money.)
- coldtea 4mo ago>They’re a trade organization that advances member interests, not a public interest nonprofit. Maybe they should say that with a huge banner on their website then. How many people give them money thinking it's for the good of FOSS in the idealistic sense?
- jrflowers 4mo agoMy favorite part of this is when they say this > Linus Torvalds is not in charge and is no longer compensated fairly, either. The highest paid people don't even use Linux. Torvalds is no longer in the top 10 (not anymore). And then link to a filing that shows his “compensation” being lower than the others but also having an extra million dollars in the “other” column. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... It kind of looks like if you count the extra million dollars earmarked for him he would be the highest-paid person on the list?
- jmclnx 4mo agoWell this is in line with the fact the LF has been quiet about these new Age Verification laws. The LF should be very vocal about how these laws will hurt Linux. It is almost seems like the LF wants these laws :(
- cromka 4mo agoThey aren't going to hurt Linux at all. Desktop Linux is of little importance still.
- wolttam 4mo ago8 million (~3%) towards the Linux kernel 180 million (~65%) towards ancillary project support, which includes a huge ecosystem of useful technologies around linux Their 'corporate operations' overhead is like 5% of expenses. whoop.
- tdeck 4mo agoIs there a description of the other projects that fall under that heading? I was curious but didn't see it skimming through the document.
- blazarquasar 4mo agohttps://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects
- SwellJoe 4mo agoAnd, 4% toward blockchain.
- geon 4mo agoGit?
- SwellJoe 4mo agoI don't know what you mean. Git is not on the charts shown on that page, and git is not related to blockchain.
- geon 4mo ago> A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes.[1][2][3][4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain That’s exactly what git is.
- siren2026 4mo agoI have some experience with the CNCF and oh boy is it a huge powergrab with excuse of inclusivity, wokeness and all the stuff that comes with it. Rarely seen so many self serving people that are in it for themselves as in the CNCF. Yes, downvote away.
- wmf 4mo agoI agree that LF and CNCF have serious conceptual problems but I think finances and executive comp are the least of them. This article is attacking the wrong part.
- siren2026 4mo agoYup. The CNCF is a power grab, not a huge money grab. All those people make money other places.
- CursedSilicon 4mo agoThis isn't Reddit. If you're getting "downvoted" it's because you aren't contributing to the discussion. Bemoaning "Downvotes" is also frowned upon directly
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- sysreq_ 4mo agoReading through the list of projects that the Linux Foundation supports (via infrastructure, governance, events, etc) with the other 181 million is honestly shocking. They are supporting, among like a thousand others - NodeJS/OpenJS, PyTorch, Electron, K8s, vLLM, ONNX, PX4, GraphQL - plus the 'smaller' entries like Zephyr, Containerd, gRPC, KiCAD, ESLint, Fastify, etc. Their portfolio is literally insane. This is the BlackRock of the entire digital world.
- marsven_422 4mo ago[dead]
- sudo_cowsay 4mo agois it investments or just donating/funding for no compensation?
- cdud3 4mo agoFeels a lot like the Mozilla Foundation which also ended to do everything but there Browser.
- philistine 4mo agoYeah but with the Linux foundation, I read the list of things they fund and I see important projects. What is it that Mozilla does again?
- smegger001 4mo agoLets see; a phone os no one used, and ad on installed without user permision as a tie-for a TV show, browser integration with a thirdparty bookmarking service that should have been an optional addon, a VPN, an abborted browser based video confercing service based on open standards that they killed for non obvious reasons, a bunch of social justice initiatives, an email masking/forwarding service killing their addon APIs in favor of googles more limited api.
- 4mo ago
- sourcegrift 4mo agoAs a 24 year linux user, linux foundation is cancer, they don't use linux themselves.
- teo_zero 4mo agoTo be fair, you should say that over 97% of the Linux Foundation's budget goes not to the Linux kernel. There's more to Linux than the kernel.
- Snild 4mo agoDon't let Stallman hear you say that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
- ThePowerOfFuet 4mo agoGNU/Linux is rapidly becoming systemd/Linux at this rate...
- WhereIsTheTruth 4mo ago15M on corporate BS 16M on event services only 8M on the kernel Thanks for reminding me why i do not support nor respect this criminal foundation full of fraudsters
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
- feverzsj 4mo agoStill far better than most charitable funds.
- vintagedave 4mo ago2% on the Linux kernel. 1% on open hardware. 4% on blockchain. I think that says it. They do support many other projects and seem to be stewards of the Linux ecosystem in general, but... 4% on blockchain?! I also feel many other projects should have their own funding: they're key to many businesses and that the 'Linux' foundation sponsors them is (a) good but (b) misplaced in the overall messed up system that is open source reliance and sponsorship.
- walrus01 4mo agoI see a whole boatload of fairly big and important open source infrastructure projects that run on Linux. Sure, maybe 97% of its budget doesn't go directly to the linux kernel, but they're supporting a lot of critical stuff.
- ExpertAdvisor01 4mo agoYeah like blockchain
- crvdgc 4mo agoAnother angle is that most donations to Linux kernel are in the form of paid employees doing kernel work. I wonder how much the kernel need besides that.
- notorandit 4mo agoWhat I see here is a great risk, something not immediately recognizable. A "hundreds of millions" initiative fueling a "trillions" market. I suspect that controlling the LF can lead to a really huge power over markets or, at least, a very cheap kill switch.
- DeathArrow 4mo agoWe need a BSD foundation. :)
- jdub 4mo agoI've had occasional concerns about the Linux Foundation and how it operates, but there's no question it has been a transformative contribution to Open Source. A bunch of folks decided to get off their butts and gather donations to support Linux... and then it snowballed. Cool. The creators and members get to decide how they contribute, and projects get to decide if they want to participate. There are alternatives for projects that need to "raise and spend", and some are 501(c)(3). (Also keep in mind that techrights.org has been an unhinged shit sheet attacking individuals and companies for insufficient purity for decades now.)
- Gathering6678 4mo agoThe title is misleading in that it makes people think only 3% goes to Linux as a whole, while that number is about the linux kernel only. Some other comments mention blockchain: one could argue for or against endorsing blockchain technology, but that doesn't seem to be the point of this article.
- emmelaich 4mo agoPretty typical for a US non-(for-)profit.
- tsoukase 4mo agoAlternative names for Linux Foundation is Open Source foundation, User Space foundation or something totally unrelated like Future of Software foundation.