Dumb question perhaps, but what do they need money for? What would they use it for? It says they pay it out to team members, but if people are doing this work for the money, doesn't that defeat the point?
It certainly would not defeat the point to pay the OpenSSL engineers. Free and open software is about your freedom to modify and share software, not about taking no money.
Open source software still costs a lot of money to make, and people do pay for it. Typically, companies like RedHat, Facebook and Google (and plenty of others, like Apple, and even Mircosoft) hire engineers in to full-time positions to work on open-source projects. That's how most open-source projects are funded. It's how Webkit grew. It's how Linux is built.
OpenSSL needs funding, and the biggest companies that depend on it will probably provide more assistance in the aftermath of heartbleed I expect. OpenSSL is so crucial, and we've just found out how exposed it is.
if people are doing this work for the money, doesn't that defeat the point?
What exactly do you think "the point" is. To not be compensated at all in any way for your work?
I see a BSDish license as an indication someone wants their work to be available to anyone. Not a statement that the product itself must be kept purely a labor of love.
Yes, if people want to be compensated in cash for their work they sell it or become employed by others. I've always seen open source more as a kharma type of thing and never expected any compensation for my contributions
I can easily see a scenario where the overtired guy committed a bug to OpenSSL because he was working on it in his spare time from a paying job.
Many, if not most of us, do the same thing. We get home - we test out ideas, burn off steam, do thing THE RIGHT WAY instead of the way we have to do it at work, etc.
Except for a lot of us, our stuff doesn't go net-wide, or is not important enough, etc.
His did.
I will be making a donation at some point in the future when I can afford it.
