Make big companies that profit from open source pay the people who maintain it and take responsibility for product safety
In short
- Big companies that make money from free software parts pay a very small share of their sales into a fund.
- The fund pays a stipend to the people who fix the parts that many products depend on.
- Companies that already hire fixers or do the repair work themselves do not have to pay for that part.
- Companies that sell a product are responsible for its safety, not the people who gave away the free parts.
- Small companies and nonprofit groups are left out and do not have to pay.
If this comes true
A former teacher in a mountain town spent more than ten years fixing, all by herself, a small part that handles text for hospitals and banks around the world, and now she gets a stipend and has hired two young apprentices. But the choice of which parts get support has also created some awkwardness between her and her old fellow volunteers.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal covers open source, meaning software whose source code, the blueprint, is public so that anyone can use it, fix it, and share it again for free, and it targets the parts that many products and services depend on. Companies above a certain size of sales or users, which earn money from products and services built with these parts, would be required to pay a very small share of their sales into a fund for upkeep. Countries would agree together on a common minimum rate, so that no single country can lower the burden to attract companies. The fund would be an international system that countries contribute to, and which parts count as important would be judged from records of dependencies, which show how many products rely on a part and how serious the damage would be if it broke. The money would go as a stipend, with no detailed orders on how to spend it, to the people and developer groups who keep fixing the parts, and would also pay for security checks and for training successors. The power to decide the direction of development would stay with the makers. If a company has its own employees work on upkeep, or pays directly for important parts, that amount can be subtracted from what it owes. The proposal also says that responsibility for harm caused by a weakness in a product falls on the company that built the part into its product and sold it, not on the individual who released the part for free, so that volunteers cannot be made to carry the blame. Small businesses, nonprofit groups, schools, and research institutions would be exempt from the burden.
BenefitsThe world's foundation is held up by society, not by burned-out individuals
People who fix the parts that many products depend on can keep doing the work without worrying about making a living. Someone who used to work late into the night around a day job could be paid properly and spend time on checks and improvements, so the time between finding a weakness and fixing it would get shorter, and weaknesses would be less likely to creep in at all. If stipends let makers train colleagues and successors, the world would also escape the situation where devices everywhere are put at risk just because one maker collapses or leaves. Tricks like planting a back door by taking advantage of a tired maker would also have a harder time working when several paid people are watching. It also matters that the money comes only from companies that profit from the parts. When profit and burden sit on the same side, the unfairness of free riders coming out ahead is corrected, and companies that already contribute to upkeep do not lose out. By deciding that the company that sold the product is responsible for it, people who shared their knowledge for free are freed from the fear of being sued, and the culture of sharing technology itself is protected. For young developers in developing countries, fixing parts used around the world would become a way to earn income no matter where they live.
DrawbacksMoney and bureaucratic yardsticks enter a culture of free cooperation
Open source is a culture that people built and grew freely, out of interest and need, without anyone ordering them to. If a large amount of money flows in, a divide may form between those who get stipends and those who do not, and many collaborators who helped without pay may lose their motivation. Because an international fund decides which parts count as important, that judgment will always leave someone dissatisfied, and money may gather around well-known parts while plain but essential parts are left behind. As long as the ones handing out the money are a group of countries, it could also become a doorway for governments to gain influence over particular developers or parts. Political questions cannot be avoided either, such as whether stipends can be paid to developers in countries under sanctions. Some companies, wanting to avoid the burden and the product responsibility, may stop using public parts and switch to their own closed software, and that would shrink the sharing of knowledge instead. The cost would eventually be added to product prices and paid by users. With tax systems differing from country to country, agreeing on a worldwide minimum and building an organization that distributes the money fairly is itself a hard problem that would take many years and great effort.
Learn the background
From smartphones and bank systems to hospital equipment and the controls of power grids, most of the software running in the world today is built by combining parts that were released for free. Many of these parts are relied on by billions of devices around the world, yet are fixed by only a few people, or sometimes one volunteer, in their spare time. There have been many cases in which a serious weakness was found in such a part and companies and governments around the world rushed to respond. There is also a known case in which someone pretended to be kind to an exhausted maker, gained their trust over a long time, and then tried to secretly plant a back door in the part. Many companies that make huge profits from these parts put almost no money or people into keeping them up, and when a weakness is found, they sometimes even demand that the makers fix it quickly. Under the current approach, which relies on donations and goodwill, the profits flow to the companies that use the parts, while the burden and the danger keep falling on makers who are not rewarded. Every time someone burns out and leaves, the digital foundation of the world becomes more fragile.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-20a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes