Over 97% of the 'Linux' Foundation's Budget Goes Not to Linux

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eesaym about 6 hours ago 72 commentsRead Article on techrights.org

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Discussion (72 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

sysreq_•about 4 hours ago

Reading 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.

apexalpha•about 2 hours ago

Well since the Cloud Native foundation is a subsidiary of the Linux foundation this makes sense.

cdud3•about 1 hour ago

Feels a lot like the Mozilla Foundation which also ended to do everything but there Browser.

sudo_cowsay•about 3 hours ago

is it investments or just donating/funding for no compensation?

woodruffw•about 5 hours ago

Without 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•about 2 hours ago

one could also argue that software that build on top of it create the ecosystem that can drive linux adoption.

This critique is myopic.

wolttam•about 5 hours ago

8 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.

SwellJoe•about 2 hours ago

And, 4% toward blockchain.

geon•about 1 hour ago

Git?

SwellJoe•about 1 hour ago

I don't know what you mean. Git is not on the charts shown on that page, and git is not related to blockchain.

tdeck•about 3 hours ago

Is there a description of the other projects that fall under that heading? I was curious but didn't see it skimming through the document.

vintagedave•about 2 hours ago

2% 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.

teo_zero•about 3 hours ago

To 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•about 3 hours ago

Don't let Stallman hear you say that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

ThePowerOfFuet•about 2 hours ago

GNU/Linux is rapidly becoming systemd/Linux at this rate...

yxhuvud•about 1 hour ago

Especially with distros like Ubuntu throwing out gnu coreutils.

jdub•29 minutes ago

I'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•26 minutes ago

The 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.

walrus01•about 2 hours ago

I 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•about 1 hour ago

Yeah like blockchain

tdeck•about 5 hours ago

The executive compensation is pretty shocking

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...

blackjack_•about 5 hours ago

Actually 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.

potamic•about 3 hours 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 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.

9753268996433•about 2 hours ago

Why so greedy?

Cap it to $12k/a, the average global personal income.

xienze•about 2 hours 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.

logicchains•about 2 hours ago

>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.

Europe has developed no new big companies in the past two decades precisely because this isn't true. The vast majority of successful companies and products are developed by people motivated by money, and if you try to prevent them from being rewarded for their hard work then they just go somewhere where their effort is more welcome.

tome•about 1 hour ago

> Obviously nobody needs more than that per year

What's the smallest amount you'd say it is obvious that no one needs per year?

wmf•about 5 hours ago

That's the difference between giving your work away for free or not. 100x.

jancsika•about 4 hours ago

1st 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

balamatom•about 4 hours ago

Or maybe the difference between doing work, and controlling humans by convincing them that what they're doing is "work".

rmunn•about 2 hours ago

> Obviously nobody needs more than that per year ...

You are, of course, in a position to know what everybody on Earth needs.

What if someone wants to give $10 million away per year to worthy charities? Will you tell them they can't?

Or... what if someone wants to own something you consider wastefully expensive? Is it your job to tell them they shouldn't? Or is it wiser to adopt the position of humility and say "Well, it's their business, not mine, what they spend their money on"?

It's easy to be motivated by envy, even when we think we aren't. It's much better for your soul, and your peace of mind, to adopt the "let them" mentality, and not decide what other people, whose lives you know nothing about, need.

apexalpha•about 2 hours ago

There is a big difference between 'needs' and 'wants'.

I'll defend the argument no one 'needs' more than 1.5 mill per year.

I agree with you greed is endless and lots of people want more and will rationalize their hoarding while others, often in their own communities, suffer.

jdub•about 1 hour ago

Opponents of obscene wealth/income inequality are typically not motivated by envy – that is your own projection.

rmunn•35 minutes ago

Interesting vote-to-downvote ratio my comment got. Seems there are a lot more people with anti-libertarian beliefs hanging out at HN at the moment than there are people who lean libertarian.

Since it was not my intention to engage in ideological battle (you'll notice I framed it as "good for your soul and peace of mind" rather than make any kind of political argument for it), I'll leave it there and not reply to any of the answers I got. But it was quite enlightening to see how people reacted to that comment.

woodruffw•about 5 hours ago

Is 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/430...

[2]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...

andrekandre•about 5 hours ago

it does fit the trend...

[0] https://www.epi.org/chart/ceopay2019-figure-a-ceo-realized-d...

woodruffw•about 5 hours ago

Not 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•about 4 hours ago

Why not?

nextaccountic•about 5 hours ago

I'm actually more curious on why a lot of directors receive $0, while others receive almost 1M

wmf•about 5 hours ago

The 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•about 4 hours ago

That seems to be correct. You can see the hours disclosure here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...

bombcar•about 5 hours ago

Directors sound like the Board, the others are Executive Directors (eg, they do the work).

mcv•about 2 hours ago

Surprised 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.

vkou•about 4 hours 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.

pyuser583•about 5 hours ago

I’m guessing it’s below market rates. Silicon Valley and all.

countWSS•about 5 hours ago

What is the 181M$ mysterious "Project Support" in the graph means? Linux is labeled separately, so it cannot be the "Project".

themafia•about 5 hours ago

That's revenue. This article isn't clear at all. Here's their actual tax filing:

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.

me_bx•about 1 hour ago

The $181M is in the Expenses categories chart, not revenue.

cortesoft•about 5 hours ago

You aren’t supposed to donate to them!

jrflowers•about 5 hours ago

My 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/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?

crvdgc•about 1 hour ago

Another 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.

DeathArrow•about 1 hour ago

We need a BSD foundation. :)

feverzsj•about 3 hours ago

Still far better than most charitable funds.

jmclnx•about 5 hours ago

Well 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•about 3 hours ago

They aren't going to hurt Linux at all. Desktop Linux is of little importance still.

WhereIsTheTruth•about 3 hours ago

15M 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

sourcegrift•about 3 hours ago

As a 24 year linux user, linux foundation is cancer, they don't use linux themselves.

siren2026•about 4 hours ago

I 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•about 4 hours ago

I 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•about 4 hours ago

Yup. The CNCF is a power grab, not a huge money grab. All those people make money other places.

CursedSilicon•26 minutes ago

This 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

notorandit•about 1 hour ago

What 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.