Corporate Donations and OSS – Chad Whitacre, Sentry

There are discussions in the OS community about whether it’s beneficial for the larger ecosystem to have giant corporations meddling around. OSS components are rarely ready to use out-of-the-box, so there are direct costs that incur when integrating, customizing and maintaining; this responsibility falls on the developer, including software upgrades, security updates, and technical support, which can quickly rack up significant ongoing bills. Corporate donations will be core to sustainable growth and creative individualism – not to mention securing the open source supply chain.