Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it
Interview Acclaimed engineer Kelsey Hightower, who stopped coding for money in 2023, remains an influential figure in the world of software, and he's proposing something that might stir up the open source community.
Funding open source is an ongoing hot topic. During a chat at Civo's recent Navigate event, Hightower joked with us how companies were happy to spend big on cloud subscriptions but tended to skimp when it came to paying a comparatively token amount for open source.
Open source developers, however, require reimbersement, and Hightower has some interesting ideas on how that could be accomplished. "I think we have all got a little complacent," he tells The Register.
"If you think about the current model ten years ago… We're going to let the startup that's funded by a VC handle it: they will pay the developers, fix the issues, deal with security compliance, and deal with the integration work.
Hightower reckons there will be several models in the future of open source. One is where the project starts out as a managed service, and another where governments get involved.
